Seasonal Magazine by John Antony

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Why India needs expert and divergent views that can be voiced fearlessly President Pranab Mukherjee has finally said something about demonetisation, and when it came, his response has been both befitting his office as the country's first citizen as well as reflecting his long experience as its finance minister. In his New Year message, President boldly acknowledged three things - the slowdown in economy due to demonetisation, the suffering of the poor due to demonetization, and the poor efficacy of India's sudden shift from its famed entitlements policy. To quote the President himself on these three aspects, here are the three statements from his speech: "Demonetisation, while immobilising black money and fighting corruption, may lead to a temporary slowdown in the economy." "We all will have to be extra careful to alleviate the suffering of the poor which might become unavoidable for the expected progress in the long term," "While I appreciate the thrust on transition from entitlement approach to an entrepreneurial one for poverty alleviation, I am not too sure that the poor can wait that long. They need to get succour here and now to have a future devoid of hunger, unemployment and exploitation." It should be noted that Indian Presidents rarely cross the line and criticize ruling governments, and that explains Pranab Mukherjee's moderate stance. But the message is clear. There was a bigger message elsewhere in his speech, which was even more powerful.

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EDITORIAL

"Tolerance, respect for contrary views, and patience are a must. These values have to be preserved. India is a multi-faceted nation of 1.3 billion people, 122 languages, 1600 dialects and 7 religions." Then going further, he added, "India’s strength lies in her diversity. The multiplicity in culture, faith and language is what makes India special. There will always be divergent strands in public discourse. We may argue. We may disagree. But we cannot deny the prevalence of multiplicity of opinion." While his address was to Governors and

Lt. Governors, the message is, again, clear. Lately, there have been attempts to brand anyone criticizing the demonetization move as unpatriotic. This has prevented even the usually fair voices in the society from airing even their legitimate concerns regarding the controversial program. But the times are changing and at least some are finding their voices. Former RBI Governor Duvvuri Subbarao has recently said that the objective of demonetisation was a subject of "contentious debate" in terms of its costs and benefits, and he termed demonetization as possibly the "most disruptive policy innovation" since 1991. Demonetization's costs and benefits would indeed be debated as when the deadline of December 30th passed, it is estimated that 97% of the old notes have

come back into the banking system! There are views by some analysts that when the final tally is done for Q3 by RBI, 100% or even slightly more than estimates would have come back. That leaves open two questions. Was the black money estimate hopelessly wrong? Or was the black money successfully laundered via this exercise? On November 8 when demonetization was announced by Modi, majority of Indians cutting across party lines, religious divides, and social strata thought that it must be a good step. After all, the PM was targeting only the black money hoarders.

Wealthier the people, greater would be their concern on interest or dividend yields or capital appreciation, and what kind of wealthy guys would keep such huge hoards of paper currency – having zero yield, zero appreciation, and possibly 10% inflation loss annually - with them? Very few HNIs, in fact.

But two months later, India has realized that Modi’s dream project of demonetization has gone wrong seriously, with it taking away the wind from almost all industrial sectors as well as agriculture. The Who-is-who of world economics have since come forward to explain what was horribly wrong with Modi’s demonetization. Companies are starting to announce how they had performed in Q3, and brace for some really bad numbers. Except for food staples, almost all companies are expected to report pathetic numbers, and that includes some of the most successful ones that were riding on the booming spend on discretionary items. It would be many quarters, if not a couple of years before India Inc and its agricultural sector would come back to its former glory. We can just keep our fingers crossed till then. Even the international media which were highly appreciative of Modi’s decisive

steps in promoting trade and investments were scathing in their attacks on his poorly conceived demonetization program. Poor forecast and even poorer implementation of the scheme by both government and RBI resulted in demonetization becoming nothing less than a sudden cash crunch that evaporated all the sentimental as well as concrete gains the economy had made since Modi came to power on high expectations of growth. Would Modi have done this, if he knew this would be the aftermath? Of course not, and what that reveals is that the Indian PM was misguided by some elements in right-wing politics as well as the administration. Almost all well-off adults in this country know that greater wealth – accounted or unaccounted – is kept as real estate, gold, diamonds, stocks, and bank deposits both domestic and foreign. Then, why this run on paper currency in ordinary people’s hands?

But how could an Indian Prime Minister be misguided so much? Extreme critics might cite that he is not an economist, and things like that, but reality is that leaders with lesser education and experience have ruled India without committing such blunders. The answer, therefore, lies in Modi’s failure to consult really knowledgeable people who are also trustworthy, before undertaking such a giant reform. Some politicians may have trouble in depending on such trustworthy experts, and if that is so let them depend on common sense. Let them re-read Gandhi who said that whenever a leader is contemplating a major reform let him think whether how this is going to affect the poorest of the poor. Forget Gandhi’s idealism if you may, but can you forgo his common sense? India is a country where 96% of its citizens’ personal wealth is below Rs. 6 lakhs! And if politicians expect this 96% to vote for them, how will they ever make them stand in endless queues to get their own hard-earned money back from banks? That is why demonetization has ended up as a horrible blunder, which now requires extraordinary steps and a longer duration to negate its after effects. John Antony

A dynamic time for higher education in India Starting from this issue, and in tune with the academic year 2017-18, which is just round the corner, Seasonal Magazine will be featuring eminent institutions of higher education, both in the public and private sectors. In this January Issue, we have covered the latest innovative initiatives from some of the noted private universities. The rapid changes happening across the length and breadth of Indian economy are sure to effect dynamic changes in the higher education space. Universities and

colleges are today compelled to look beyond their traditional boundaries and to inculcate what all are best in the

corporate world, industries, society, and other educational institutions of repute in both India and abroad. Starting from this issue, Seasonal Magazine will provide effective voice to institutions that are progressing well on counts like merit scholarships, industrial internships, exchange programs, placement assistance, soft-skills development, research, start-up incubation, social service, and all such emerging criteria. So, dear students and parents, stay tuned! SEASONAL MAGAZINE

CONTENTS PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES

Emerging on Innovation Select private varsities across the country are emerging as leaders based on their innovative initiatives in academics, research,tie-ups, industry interactions, and start-up incubation.

ALEPPO: IS THE MORAL CASE FOR OUSTING ASSAD STILL RELEVANT? Aleppo has fallen. It is being celebrated as a victory for proAssad forces at the expense of ISIS. Whether they now remain in the “wrong” or “right” hands..

IS GURUMURTHY USING VOODOO ECONOMICS TO DEFEND DEMONETIZATION? Mohan Guruswamy heads the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi, an independent and privately funded thinktank, and is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation..

SMOKING UPS HEART ATTACK RISK 8-FOLD For young adults who smoke, the risk of a major heart attack is 8 times higher than for their peers who never smoked or who gave it up, a UK study found.

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HOW OPEN SOURCE SEEDS ARE COMBATING PATENTS Around the world, plant breeders are resisting what they see as corporate control of the food supply by making seeds available for other breeders to..

FACEBOOK LEADS TO DEPRESSION, SAYS STUDY A recent study has found an association between social comparison on Facebook and depression.

WHY THE CASH CRUNCH MIGHT TAKE LONGER TO RESOLVE “You need to talk to RBI,” said SBI chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya on We, when asked how long the cash-shortage will last in ATMs and how well the..

HYPERLOOP EYES MUMBAI PUNE TRANSPORT LINK Los Angeles-based Hyperloop, which is developing the concept of futuristic travel in a nearvacuum, has approached the transport ministry for land..

MANAV RACHNA EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

GROOMING GRADUATES READY FOR INDUSTRY & INNOVATION Faridabad based Manav Rachna Educational Institutions (MREI) have been focusing on the applied knowledge of its students, right from its inception. The Group rapidly garnered a name for itself in many academic streams, but most notably in engineering. Since then, many changes have taken place across industry sectors, and even in the nation's economy. But this focus on applied or practical knowledge, as well as the soft skills required to work in groups, are today helping Manav Rachna graduates and postgraduates to excel in not only high-paying careers, but to chalk out start-ups of their own. A team of students from Manav Rachna International University (MRIU) was recently in the limelight for their automated and non-invasive screening tool for cervical cancer, 'Griwaditi', when they won an award at the Accenture-Yahoo #Innovation Jockeys awards. President of MREI Prashant Bhalla says such a feat was possible only because the university management and the faculty were fully behind these students, even facilitating the necessary funding. Already a leader in overseas academic tie-ups, MRIU has signed recent agreements with two overseas institutions - College Sevigne of France and President University of Indonesia. President Prashant Bhalla says these generic MoUs would slowly evolve into concrete projects once the faculties on either side start and deepen their interactions. MREI is also utilizing its locational advantage of being in an industrialized state like Haryana, as well as of being in Delhi-NCR. Recently, Manav Rachna Educational Institutions organized a seminar on soft skills development

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with a Japanese organization, for its employees. Haryana is well-known for hosting the maximum number of Japanese multinationals in India. MREI students had also attracted great attention due to their innovative products & projects in display at the IITF 2016 Fair at Delhi's Pragati Maidan. The university is closely working with concerned student teams to help them commercialize their suitable projects. Already, a few thriving start-ups have been incubated at the Manav Rachna campuses, and these have been doing well on both the revenue and profitability fronts. The private university is also providing great thrust on research activities, by partnering with various multinationals including majors like IBM, Maruti Suzuki, Mitsubishi, NDTV and several others. The Group has also successfully changed its focus on engineering courses to a wider variety of courses that satisfy the services sector like finance. Due to these factors, campus placements continue to be robust at MREI. Seasonal Magazine recently met Prashant Bhalla, President, MREI, for this interview:

ecently ManavRachna Educational Institutions organized a seminar on soft skills development with a Japanese organi zation. What were its objectives and how did it benefit your students? We have been working with organizations that work closely with the Japanese government. We were looking at certain skill-development programmes to be jointly organized with them. Initially, we started with the thought of working with industries and looking at creating specific modules for the skill development of their workers. This programme was more focused on the industry people, not specifically one for students but the engagement is there for the students with the industry, faculty, and top-level executives. We had created programmes specific to their requirements. A team of students from ManavRachna International University (MRIU) was recently in news for their automated and non-invasive screening tool for cervical cancer, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Griwaditiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, when they won an award at the Accenture-Yahoo #Innovation Jockeys awards. How did SEASONAL MAGAZINE

the university assist these students, and are there plans to commercialize it? We have innovation incubation centres, where the students are mentored and supported by faculty members who work closely with them. We also give them ample funding opportunities, including a fund that will be maintained for these purposes. We give them the required support to develop their model or prototype in these incubation centres. Any support that they require from converting their prototype into a nascent startup, we provide it. Many of our students have already launched their startups, one of which was an online company dealing with trading in cricket bats. Their customized, handmade bats have seen international takers and they are doing very well for themselves. Another startup, which we have greatly supported, has been about delivering skill development programs in the field of STEM. They have initiated core engineering projects in robotics technology, computer, and mechanical engineering etc. The entire gamut of their curriculum has been used in our institutions and they gradually plan to introduce this in external curriculums. Such companies and many others are

doing exceptionally well in the revenue and profitability fronts and the company I cited above is trying to successfully bridge the skill gaps in school and industry. Currently, these are run through their on-site platforms where they setup skill labs in schools and the whole execution is carried out via the skill labs. The whole model is that they provide these project-related consumables or the kit which they provide. The whole learning environment is there to support it, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s primarily an on-site model. Gradually, they would start offering

virtual projects but for now, in order to best equip the users so that they can comprehend this new system, it is necessary to follow the current model of on-site delivery. The university has signed recent agreement with two overseas institutions - College Sevigne of France and President University of Indonesia. Are these agreements identical, and how would MRIU benefit from these moves? Right now, these are generic MoUs. Recently, the President Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

delegate team visited our campus and we plan to jointly hold entrepren eurship and family business conferences in Indonesia. Once the faculties of both universities start engaging with each other, there is greater scope for broadening the horizon of opportunities. We look at doing joint PhDs, joint research projects, exchange, and summer programmes. We have signed nearly 30 MoUs with universities all over the world. These MoUs are initially laid out generically and depending on the core strengths of the respective university

faculties, we then enter into full-fledged agreements on those areas of expertise. This would also include giving PhD options to our students, availability of grants and scholarships, encouraging ours and their faculty to learn certain modules offered in the two universities, conducting workshops etc. When we took up the community intiative of the Bhatkal Lake project, that had dried up, we were provided expertise and inputs on how these issues can be tackled at various levels. Are there twinning programmes happening? SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Yes, we would be interested in doing that but as of now they are in the pipeline. There are certain UGC regulations we need to get approvals for. The UGC is certainly encouraging this scheme. The guidelines were tough on this front in the past, but they have been eased out now. MREI students had attracted great attention due to their products & projects in display at IITF 2016 Fair. Are you hopeful of any of the dozens of innovative products on display by your students to soon see market adoption? Can you mention about a couple of such prospective products? There are some products likespe cialized electric panels which are fast acquiring relevance in the clean energy space. Also, another example is the cervical cancer tool that you had mentioned. They had also developed a brush exclusively to enhance dental hygiene and a postural tool created for doctors. A student had also developed an electric scooter which he felt could be handy for guards while patrolling around campus. We also participated in Formula One competitions, where energy-efficient cars are being developed. So, most of these projects have a tremendous potential. ManavRachna has been a leader in placements for the last few years, and how do you assess last yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; confusions regarding placements at various elite institutions including IITs and IIMs? I think this confusion arosefrom some startups making commitments and then somehow being unable to honour their commitments and offerings due to various circumstances. We also see large companies like Tata going through turmoil. I think we need to admit that these will be recurring phenomena. I think this can happen to any company at any point of time. Otherwise, our placement cells have reported decent showing and our students have been bagging good packages from Microsoft, Amazon, Accenture etc and so overall my assessment would be that the job scenario has been healthy. Typically, for our students I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see many challenges with respect to this. While there are no two opinions whatsoever regarding infrastructure SEASONAL MAGAZINE

and facilities created by leading private universities like MRIU, how hopeful are you about your institution breaking free from the private university mould and making its mark in research work that will be noticed nationally and internationally?

tied up with CIMA for our CA programmes which is like an added qualification students can take along with their commerce degrees. We have evolved these kinds of synergies. On healthcare, we have tie-up with Fortis Hospitals.

We are very focused on research in terms of what our students and faculty have achieved. We have around 250 patents that we have applied for. There are many research areas where our faculty and students have been working by forming clusters specific to a certain field like material science, automobile engineering etc. The students are well guided by the faculty members in terms of getting the desired research results.

Do you think you can expect sufficient funding or support from corporates? Is there a proper system in place for this in private universities such as MRIU?

We also have the industry doing their bit. We have some centers like the IoT, Centre for Mitsubishi Electric, Su-Kam has established a center for smart solar energy, Honda is setting up an automobile centre. These industry people are giving us good projects for example Maruti Suzuki gave us good equipment, with Infosys we have a faculty development program. Many senior corporate executives are even part of our academic councils. So, we do believe that the Centre of Excellence approach is the best way to go forward and as a private university, we do have the autonomy and benefits we get which we use to our advantage. In terms of knowledge partners, we have IBM and NDTV is driving our workshops on media programs, also with the Bombay Stock Exchange, ICICI Securities, KPMG is working with us on finance, we have

There are some best practices that have evolved and some of the industries have done quite a bit on that front. I am part of the CII Higher Education Committee, where we try to come up with solutions as to how we can bridge the institutions with the industry needs. The industry

aggression to pursue such initiatives. But if you see in government institutions, even if the intentions are sound, the results aren’t forthcoming. In India, privatization in education space is only a recent development and it has been only 20 years since the first private engineering college came up in North India. Merit based scholarship has been the prime way in which world’s best universities have attracted student talent. What are MRIU’s strategies in this regard?

is certainly driving some of our initiatives which, as you would acknowledge, are merely not from an academic point of view. The students become totally engaged in these projects for which they receive funding and projects that have a meaningful objective. Even in research, we have an online platform where the student gets engaged on a project from 2nd year and are guided at every step through a support mechanism – right from picking the best literature reviews to being hand-held to achieve good quality research paper and what kind of patents to apply for etc. So gradually the industry is coming forward with much better purpose and conviction. We ourselves being in the private sector, we definitely have the flexibility and the

We have our own model and for entry itself we have clearly specified benchmarks, including when we give away 100% tuiton waiver to meritorious students. In continuity also, we have merit-based and need-based scholarships and students are receiving the best possible support. We have separate scholarship categories for sportspersons, defence personnel etc. The lull in engineering graduate intake by various industries has affected student appetite for these courses. Do you see this trend reversing in the near future? Well, it is well documented as to how the industries were in desperate need of highly qualified candidates with respect to the employability quotient. The mindset that everybody has to become a doctor or engineer was driven purely by the peer-pressure. Students have now slowly started to realize the

job opportunities in the services sector. For example, in finance there are huge opportunities, even in media that is the case. The opportunities in the services sector have increased and the job sentiment has really boomed. Also, students have now come to accept their competence and look for opportunities where they can best employ these transferable skills. We have observed this trend quite closely. Academically well-qualified students are opting for non-engineering courses and in liberal arts so many areas of opportunities have opened up. Demonetization drive has taken the country by surprise, and unlike earlier views, its chain-reaction type effects are being felt by most sectors now. How has it affected the higher education segment as per your assessment? Well, in our case we have always insisted on online payments and we have even collaborated with Paytm. So we have always believed in this cashless model. But having said that, the economy shouldn’t be drastically affected which can lead to unemployment and other shocks. Cash shortages will be overcome in the long term but the economy will have to emerge stronger where growth isn’t pegged back. For the record, the economy has already taken a hit with people now cutting spending and restricting it to buying only essentials. The luxury segment is definitely hit. People are now desperately trying to increase their base savings. We now hear that even gold holding will face some challenges. The tendency in our country has always been to park money in one of these assets but suddenly we are being told to switch to plastic money, which surely has its effects. But overall I would say that such a move was necessary and we need to analyze our growth compared to the world economy. It is necessary to root out corruption. Nobody can visualize the effects this would bring. Eventually, people are patiently waiting for low interest rates to be announced, a new taxation regime to be installed. Going forward, the only challenge is that the derailment of the economy shouldn’t happen. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

JSS UNIVERSITY

EMERGING AS A LEADER IN HEALTH SCIENCES EDUCATION JSS University today attracts research scientists from overseas countries, while its faculty and students often get international travel grants. JSS has hosted several national level conferences, and its students are often coming first in attracting noted scholarships. Many of its research papers have garnered the achievement of being the best paper in conferences. JSS University is surely growing along the fine international tradition of being much more than a university that just grants degrees. A deemed university in Karnataka from the private or self-financed sector, it is accredited by NAAC at A Grade and comes at leading positions in the NIRF ranking by MHRD. JSS stands for Jagadguru Sri Shivarathreeshwara, and is promoted by JSS Mahavidyapeetha, one of Asia’s largest educational groups. Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji serves as the Chancellor

JSS University headquartered at Mysuru continues to push the limits of innovations and achievements to emerge as a leader in its core areas of competence. During the recently held international medical conference, ASICON 2016 at Mysuru, the highlight was the telecast of live surgeries. While six hospitals participated for the 60 live surgeries including high-profile ones like Mumbai's Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital, the star of the conference was Mysuru-based JSS Hospital, which in its five operation theatres, performed nearly 30 surgeries including those to treat breast cancer and thyroid. The feat was impressive as on attendance at the conference were over 5,000 experts and post graduate students, with presentation of around 1,100 scientific papers. JSS University is also a leading institution in India when it comes to meaningful academic tie-ups with prestigious overseas institutions. The Southern Illinois University SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Edwardsville's (SIUE) School of Pharmacy has partnered with JSS College of Pharmacy since 2014 to offer a student exchange program. Two students in their final year of pharmacy education have the opportunity to complete an elective rotation at each respective institution. SIUE students spend five weeks in India, while JSS students spend eight weeks in USA. Two students from the JSS College of Pharmacy, Nickita Benny and Bhagya Sree, are currently shadowing SIUE’s Kelly Gable, PharmD, BCPP, in the department of psychiatry in a St. Louis family healthcare center. Now, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is exploring the expansion of this already successful pharmacy exchange program to include the University’s breadth of health sciences. This was the main topic of discussion when JSS VC B Suresh, visited the SIUE campus in US recently. The university or its constituent colleges have tie-ups with La Trobe University, Australia; Khon Kaen University, Thailand; University of Southern Nevada, USA; Long Island

University, USA; AIMST University, Malaysia; Howard University, USA; University of Illinois, USA; National Institutes of Health, USA; and Oman Medical College, Oman. In 2015-16 alone, two lecturers and four interns from JSS have undergone specialized training in USA and Australia by utilizing these kind of tieups, whereas many overseas institutes have send their faculty, research scholars, and students to JSS University

JSS Hospital in Mysuru has been providing quality healthcare at affordable prices in the vicinity and has been enhancing its medical facilities for the benefit of patients. Their hard work at negligible costs to patients have not gone unnoticed by even the corporate sector.

for training. When it comes to academic performance too, JSS Pharmacy College is a national leader. The new initiative by Central Government, NIRF, has ranked JSS College of Pharmacy, Ooty, at 9th nationally, under pharmacy colleges. The top performance and focus of JSS on pharmacy courses is also thanks to the expertise of Dr B Suresh, who is a noted authority in the pharmacy field. Dr Suresh holds distinguished degrees in pharmacy like MPharm, PhD, & Sc.D., and is currently President, Pharmacy Council of India (PCI). JSS Hospital in Mysuru has been providing quality healthcare at affordable prices in the vicinity and has been enhancing its medical facilities for the benefit of patients. Their hard work at negligible costs to patients have not gone unnoticed by even the corporate sector. State Bank of Mysore has recently donated new dialysis machines to JSS Hospital. Five new dialysis machines

Dr. B Suresh, Vice Chancellor worth Rs 20 lakh to help patients in need were donated to JSS Hospital by the bank under its corporate social responsibility (CSR) program. Presently JSS Hospital has 22 dialysis machines functioning 24X7 providing treatment to average 50-60 patients per day. With the recent CSR aid from SBM, the hospital has purchased five new machines to facilitate additional patients to avail this facility. When it comes to social service too, the university undertakes meaningful work. JSS University recently collaborated with NSS to organize a seven day National Integration Camp. Attendees were from across the country and various activities including planting of saplings, cleanliness projects, flag hosting, yoga, meditation, and other cultural programmes as well as talks by experts on a wide range of topics were the highlights of the event. It was organized at the JSS College of Pharmacy campus at Mysuru. JSS Hospital has tied up with USA’s famed Mayo Clinic to deploy a software program to reduce human errors in its Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Titled as ‘CERTAIN’, this software takes varied inputs like a critically ill patient's physical findings, history, lab studies, imaging inputs etc and suggests optimum treatments that reduce complications in the ICU. To begin with, this software has been first deployed in the paediatric ICU of JSS Hospital, Mysuru. When it comes to research SEASONAL MAGAZINE

initiatives, it is hard to find another health sciences university in the private sector that is as hardworking as JSS. Recently, Prof. Himanshu Patel, a clinical pharmacist from JSS attracted international attention for a paper he presented in a conference at Singapore which found that India's public cancer care programs were woefully inadequate. In academic year 2015-16 alone, faculty and research students of the university have done 307 research publications, which is a feat in in itself. Of these, 51 were noted research articles in various national and international journals with the impact factor range of 0.74 - 3.34 by Thomson Reuters. JSS scholars also made 35 presentations, both oral and posters, in various national and international pharmacy conferences and seminars. The quality of the research output was also impressive. Three among the JSS fraternity of faculty and research scholars succeeded in filing patents. JSS University’s ambition and diligence in this regard is evident from the formation of a Patent Cell that oversees the dimension of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), and a Patent Review Committee that includes external experts from such leading public organizations like CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, and National Research Development Corporation, DSIR, Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. JSS University's industry interaction initiatives also shine with MoUs signed with leading international and national firms like AlfaGene Biosciences, Colgate Palmolive, Alveus Pharmaceuticals, Apex Laborites, Etica Clinpharm, Tablets India, Fourttts India, Waters India etc. Going beyond just MoUs, JSS University has already undertaken research, preclinical studies, consultancy, or employee training for these organizations. Leading experts also came in as guest lecturers from reputed organizations including Novartis, Biocon, and Himalaya, to JSS during the year. Going beyond industry, JSS University has also worked with cutting-edge frontline research organizations like SEASONAL MAGAZINE

World Health Organization (WHO), Eurasian Federation of Oncology (EAFO), Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) etc, and renowned scientists from these institutes have graced JSS campus as guest lecturers. JSS postgraduate students have also undertaken their project works in leading corporations like Aurobindo, Biocon, Himalaya, Hindustan Unilever, Lupin, Micro Labs, Mylan Labs, Novo Nordisk, Orchid Healthcare, Philips etc. JSS University is home to a Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology and Natural Products Research, which is spearheading the university’s efforts in knowledge creation and dissemination of the same to the society around. JSS University, based on its success in

JSS University is home to a Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology and Natural Products Research, which is spearheading the university’s efforts in knowledge creation and dissemination of the same to the society around.

research, is today in a position to attract research funding from various national and international bodies, and is also funding research projects on its own. JSS students have also excelled in career placements during the past year with students from its various streams getting absorbed by numerous organizations including Dr. Reddys Lab, Micro Labs, Himalaya Drugs, Mylan, Biocon, Cipla, Novartis, Unilever, Pfizer, Astra Zeneca Pharma, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Columbia Asia Hospital, and many more. JSS University offers programs ranging from Undergraduate Diploma to PhD level in various fields including medicine, dental, pharmacy, water & health, health systems management, life sciences etc. The constituent colleges include JSS Medical College, JSS Dental College, and JSS College of Pharmacy, all at Mysore, and JSS College of Pharmacy at Ooty. Courses offered include diploma, graduate, post graduate, post graduate diploma, MPhil and PhD programs. JSS is always innovating by launching new courses that are in demand by the industry and society around it. New courses launched recently include PG Diploma in Medical Devices; BPharm (Pharmacy Practice) and Residency Program in Oncology; Oral Health Care Certificate Programme for Nurses; Certificate Course in Maxillofacial Trauma; and Certificate Course in Dental Implantology.

AISECT UNIVERSITY

Aiming For A Skilled And Digitally Literate Workforce "Keeping up with the times" is a motivating principle for many in the education space. However, very few like AISECT University, compliment the need for swift execution. In the course of this year, AISECT University seems to have fully encapsulated the benefits of a digitally-driven future coupled with skills development programmes. In this regard, the University has recently embraced the digital wave in consonance with the State Govt's efforts and has continued to promote skill-based education through the opening of their latest campus in Jharkhand.

erhaps, the most praiseworthy achievement of AISECT University in 2016 was winning the acclaimed World Education Award (2016). The university has won the award for the 'Progressive Higher Education Institution Operating in the Private Space' category. The World Education Summit (WES), organised by Elets Technomedia, is the world's premier platform on education for everyone who is passionate about education and learning. Over the years, the summit has become the largest gathering of education leaders. In fact, the university's founding principle has been towards reducing overall skills deficit and to address this SEASONAL MAGAZINE

requirement at two levels. Firstly, AISECT has revived the practical part of the curriculum through collaboration with local industries so as to enable a hands-on learning experience. Secondly, the setting up of Skill Academies in each academic department in collaboration with the NSDC has provided the required impetus to address the long-term concerns relating to a skilled workforce. According to AISECT University's Vice Chancellor Prof Vijay Kant Verma, this vision is being nurtured with an emphasis on skills and research-based higher education. "AISECT University has been a progressive institution ever since its launch and I am happy that our vision has been commended at such a

prestigious platform. Unfortunately, not much emphasis is given to handson experience and skills in the formal higher education space in India.We believe that progression is not just heading forward in the right direction, but taking all with you". In early September, the University welcomed its second campus, this one in Jharkhand at Matwani in Hazaribagh district. The new campus set up by the university has all the basic amenities like that of the digital library, training and placement cell, computer laboratories, multi-skill centre and it also offers a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities to the students. The campus is spread across an area of 25,000 square feet. This is also the first

private university in the district. As of now, the university offers under graduate and post graduate programmes. The programmes are offered under different verticals like management, commerce, agriculture, art and vocational, computer science and IT. The university is also in the process of offering programmes in M.Phil and Ph.D. The university has also made one skill compulsory for the students. This will benefit the under graduate student because they leave the university with 3 to 4 skills and also with a good experience, according to Mr. Santosh Kumar Choubey, Chancellor, AISECT University. “In the present era, there is a need for educational programmes which focus exclusively on skill enhancement thereby giving a boost to the practical efficiencies of the youth. We, at AISECT University, aim at making our students competent and professional. We believe in their holistic development of the students and that’s why our goal is not only to provide them standardized education and training, but also to enhance students’ skill-set so that they are ready to face the hurdles of the professional world as soon as they step out of the University.”, says Mr. Choubey. AISECT is also not far behind in the MOOC domain. Earlier this year, AISECT launched ‘Aisectmoocs.com’, a free online Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, in partnership with Ireland-based Alison Group, reportedly to support the Indian government’s Skill India and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan schemes. The MOOC platform will offer 750 diploma and certificate level courses in English and Hindi, and the company plans to add other Indian regional languages in the coming months. Students wanting to do courses can either do so online or by going to the AISECT Centre. Being a partner under the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has enabled AISECT to reach for newer frontiers in the education space. Another recent development in the digital ecosystem has been the University's committed approach to going completely cashless in the near

Santosh Choubey, founder future. This comes on the heels of an announcement made by Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan, the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and subsequent circulars issued by the UGC and CBSE to inform educational establishments about implementing the changes.

The two universities are also planning to enter into dialogue with the Sector Skill Council of India to lobby for the inclusion of Yoga as a formal employable skill under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneur ship.

Siddhartha Chaturvedi, director of AISECT University said, “We are planning to conduct a two- or three-day training in which we will educate students how to do cashless transactions and why it is important. We will acquire a POS machine and e-wallet of SBI. Till now, we have been taking payments by DDs and in cash. Now, cash is not an option.”

As part of the MoU the two universities will launch a joint programme of research on Yoga within one year in addition to the development of skill courses on Yoga, where S–VYASA would be responsible for curriculum planning and development and AU will provide the necessary help and implementation within its framework. The MoU also includes Yoga training of AISECT University’s faculty at S–VYASA and technical training of S-VYASA Faculty on computer and electronics at AU at discounted fees.

The University has also been a staunch backer of the Central Govt's efforts at promoting yoga by offering courses and curriculum development. To this extent, AISECT University and Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S-VYASA) based in Bengaluru, Karnataka have entered into a five year MoU that focuses on bringing up the status and importance of Yoga by promoting it as an employable skill rather than just a practice of well-being.

As envisaged in their vision and mission statement, the University strives to create a world-class centre for knowledge application and not just knowledge creation. The University has put itself at the globalised forefront of a progressive India and is well positioned to impart dedicated service towards the social and economic development of the nation. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

MS RAMAIAH UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

A UNIQUE PROACTIVE CULTURE OF LEARNING Bangalore based private university, MS Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (RUAS) focuses on delivering innovation that can be applied by the industry and society around. The brainchild of its Chancellor MR Jayaram and Vice-Chancellor Prof. SR Shankapal, the institution is designed from the ground up to be an innovation university, and aspires to be a model for other universities. The varsity is noted for a unique culture of proactive learning by way of international tie-ups, internships, industry interactions, research, overseas student exchange, applied projects, start-ups, incubation, discussions, events, debates, meetings, sports, social service, and lots more. The impressive result from all these activities is that students learn their skills naturally and multi-dimensionally, making them not just ready for industry, but capable of taking up leadership roles in industry faster. hile many private universities present scope for international student exchanges, only a few institutions follow through on such promises. RUAS takes special care to facilitate and organize such exchange programs, and recently a team of final year MTech students could visit Russia, to undergo their students internship at St. Petersburg University of Architecture and Civil Engineering. During their 3week stay, they not only attended expert classes and lab workshops there, but got to explore both modern as well as ancient architecture of cities like Moscow and Kazan. The university has also been forging newer tie-ups with industry, with the latest being with Planet Aerospace. The tie-up enabled RUAS to conduct a oneday workshop on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Satellite Architecture for a Remote Sensing Satelliteâ&#x20AC;? at the university campus. Eminent speakers from Planet Aerospace including its President RK Rajangam, Retd. Scientist from ISRO, held technical sessions on various topics that benefited the university's faculty members and students of its Micro Satellite Dream Team. Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (RUAS) has several research centres aspiring to be Centres of Excellence. Its Nutraceutical & SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Nutrition Research Centre (NNRC) at the Gnanagangothri Campus is one such facility. Recently, NNRC held a high-level discussion on furthering the Centre's research activities. True to its respect for knowledge, RUAS had invited Dr. V Prakash, Distinguished Scientist of CSIR to address the faculty and researchers. And true to its culture of multidisciplinary learning, those in attendance included the Deans and HoDs of Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Dental Sciences, Pharmacy, and Department of Chemistry.

Many top corporates in India have a synergistic relation with RUAS. For furthering such relationships meaningfully, RUAS recently collaborated with World HRD Congress to host the 11th Employer Branding Awards. Vice Chancellor Prof. SR Shankapal presented the awards to 25 companies for their best practices in HR. A young university, RUAS has been maturing rapidly and it recently held its first alumni meet, SAMPARK 2016. Well attended by several of its alumni, and with the chief guests being those alumni with the highest achievements within a short span of time, the meet advanced the concept of funding current PhD scholars by the alumni, which is an international best practice in select universities. RUAS students have been highly competitive with their peers. Recently, a four-student team from the university outclassed 22 teams from other universities and colleges to emerge as semi-finalists in the 'The Big Debate' conducted by National HRD Network's

rewarding careers. Indian military and paramilitary forces, thanks to our long boundaries, belligerent neighbours, and multiple insurgencies, often suffer serious injuries in battlefields. If left untreated for just the first 30 minutes, many of these injuries can turn fatal due to uncontrolled bleeding. Haemostatic drugs need to be administered intravenously as soon as possible to stop this, but it requires the soldier to be transferred to a battlefield hospital where a medical practitioner can carefully locate the vein to administer the drug. In most locations and situations, especially in non-urban encounters, this is not possible within the first half-an-hour and that explains why we lose many of our most valiant soldiers and commandos in combat.

MR Jayaram (NHRDN) Bangalore chapter. MS Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (MSRUAS), has eight core faculties including engineering & technology, art & design, management & commerce, hospitality & catering technology, dental sciences, pharmacy, science, and humanities. While its research projects are impressive for their complex achievements, the university also takes pride in the fact that even average students are groomed here for highly

But what if, an automated, precise, and mobile equipment can be designed for locating the vein swiftly and administering this drug, very near to the battlefield itself? What if the equipment can be operated by a soldier itself without the help of a medical practitioner? A pipe dream perhaps? But a team of scholars at MSRUAS has designed and developed this very equipment – Automated Intravenous Haemostatic Drug Delivery System that works like a charm. Now, development of such a complex equipment is impossible for any single department of a university. It requires

the coordinated research & development skills of doctors, mechanical engineers, computer scientists etc. And that is what the core 5-member team behind this applied innovation did at MSRUAS. The plight of amputees is another area where India is facing serious challenges. According to some estimates, the country is home to over 10 million people who have lost one of their limbs, and their staggering number puts them above the entire populations of countries like UAE, Sweden, or Hungary. In case anyone is searching for reasons, look no further than our high rate of serious road accidents, and high incidence of diabetes and vascular diseases. While the country has one indigenous innovation to its credit in this domain – the Jaipur Foot – nothing very modern has ever been used here here except for costly imported prostheses. The gold standard in prosthesis technology worldwide is currently the bionic limb, where actual brain signals are used to control a robotic arm or leg. While the amputees in developed countries like USA, UK, Germany, or Japan, have today access to sophisticated bionic arms, most Indians can’t afford it as it costs between Rs. 17 lakhs to Rs. 27 lakhs for just one such robotic arm. But a multi-disciplinary team of five researchers led by none other than its Vice-Chancellor Dr. SR Shankapal has developed a bionic arm system that can read the brain’s signals to the nonexisting limb and use it to move the robotic arm with a high degree of accuracy. The fact that they have developed it from the scratch and that too indigenously is giving high hopes that soon a low cost bionic arm can come to the aid of Indian hand amputees too. Meanwhile, for those with walking disabilities including the elderly, another team of MSRUAS researchers have pioneered the ‘EasyWalk’, a revolutionary ambulatory aid that can double up as a walker and chair, is lightweight, foldable, and can be used indoors as well as outdoors. The research and development behind SEASONAL MAGAZINE

programs, all the students are given by the specific company, whereas in some others a percentage of students are from outside, but they also get absorbed by the industry, as these are courses designed by the end user which is the specific industry itself.

‘EasyWalk’ followed world-class product development protocols including market research and user feedback. Yet another innovation from MSRUAS research teams include an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) called Kainos for military and anti-terrorist activities. Equipped with self-decision making and self-navigation capabilities, Kainos which is a military robot also takes commands from its counterpart the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, and is equipped with sophisticated cameras and transmitters to send back live video. In fact, there is no end to describing the multi-disciplinary research projects that have been developed successfully at MSRUAS in recent years. They include torque converter design software (for automatic gear shifts in cars – first time in India), futuristic monorail design, ragi de-husker, home automation system, helmet mounted soldier adhoc network for real time av communications in battlefield, optical flow based systems for navigating unmanned aerial and ground vehicles, fluid thrust vectoring for next generation combat aircraft that can do extreme maneuvers, unmanned micro helicopter, and various unmanned aerial vehicles including quadcopter, fixed wing, and flapping wing drones.

Prof. SR Shankapal The kind of transformation that MSRUAS can cause in even average students will come across as surprising to everyone. Very ordinary students from Diploma and ITI backgrounds, after doing the university’s course in Product Design, are today employed in top automakers’ facilities like the GM Design Centre in Bangalore, with salaries they couldn’t have imagined a few years back. The university also appeals to highly performing students, especially at the postgraduate level. One reason for this is the university's focus on industryspecific PG courses. As of now eight companies are collaborating with MSRUAS to run these types of courses.

Very few private universities in India, that too as young as MS Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, can dream of achieving these kind of projects.

For example, MSRUAS has an MTech course in Cyber Security and Information Assurance, designed by Paladion Networks. In some such

But the real beauty of all these achievements is that this has been done without denying access to even average students for all its courses. In other words, even average students have participated and benefited from such development exercises in this private university. How is this possible?

THE UNIVERSITY ALSO APPEALS TO HIGHLY PERFORMING STUDENTS, ESPECIALLY AT THE POSTGRADUATE LEVEL. ONE REASON FOR THIS IS THE UNIVERSITY'S FOCUS ON INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC PG COURSES. AS OF NOW EIGHT COMPANIES ARE COLLABORATING WITH MSRUAS TO RUN THESE TYPES OF COURSES.

MSRUAS has done another innovation in this regard – the Centre for Learning Differences – aimed at helping out slow learners with extra coaching, during their first and second years of study at the undergraduate level. The Centre has 10 professors and lecturers from 10 departments, as coordinators, who are passionate about bringing up slow learners, and this system has worked wonders so far. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

When it comes to placements, MSRUAS is very particular that each and every one of its graduates are able to do the professional work he or she was trained for. Towards this, industry requirements are kept in mind, starting from the curriculum design stage itself. Additionally, MSRUAS has deep connections with various industries as this private university is a leader in conducting training programs for various companies. Currently the university is doing such training programs for around 25 leading companies in India, in various sectors. MSRUAS takes its research initiatives seriously, and encourages faculty and PhD students to focus on applied research and get their study published in the best national and international journals. MSRUAS is also unique in that they provide the best research students with financial support, from what the faculty gets for their research work with institutions like the DRDO. The faculty here can’t continue with their static knowledge as, every year, at least 15 of the lecturers are send for overseas training at good institutions. MSRUAS also makes sure that at least 6 professors from abroad come here for training the faculty every year. Apart from its historical tie-up with United Kingdom’s Coventry University, it has tie-ups with six universities in Russia, while in UK it has relations with two more institutions. The Undergraduate Programmes at MSRUAS are BTech, BDes, BHM, BPharm, PharmD, and BDS while its Postgraduate Programmes are MTech, MDes, MBA, MHA, MPharm, MDS, MCom, and MSc. It also offers Doctoral Programmes leading to PhD degree. MSRUAS also offers three superspecialized MBA programs - MBA (Innovation & Entrepreneurship), MBA (Pharma Business Management), and MBA (Hospitality Management).

WHY ALLIANCE UNIVERSITY SHOULD BOUNCE BACK There is no doubt whatsoever that Bangalore based Alliance University, and its students are currently going through difficult times due to an unfortunate management tussle at the top. However, if an amicable settlement evolves, Alliance University is likely to scale earlier heights. ounded in 2010 by Dr. Madhukar G. Angur, Alliance University has 10 specializations, spread across 40 plus acres of lush green campus. Alliance University partners with 40 international universities and has 275 plus recruiting partners. There are 12,000 Alliance alumni working across the world. Obviously there is a huge skills mismatch even now in many of the universities and colleges of this country. At Alliance, what they are attempting is a seamless transition from education to society. There is a dramatic change in employability paradigms, for example this new concept of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;nano degreesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; followed by many new generation MNCs where they take in fresh graduates and train them in specific high-end skill sets.

best in industry would love to interact. They consult to corporates and some of them even advise their governments. That is why industry interaction is something which is there in Alliance University by design, and how their students make maximum mileage out of this initiative. Alliance University believes that research is all about knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination. An ideal university should work

towards enhancement of society at large, and this is especially so now, as humanity is rapidly moving towards becoming a fully integrated knowledge society. There are big issues facing our world now and bigger issues that will emerge in the future. Alliance believes that if their research is effective, it will attempt to solve such problems and enhance the quality-of-life of people around them. That is the acid test, and in all the research initiatives being Dr. Madhukar G. Angur

Many such nano degrees are in niche domains like, say, the engineeringmanagement interface where there is lot of new developments and strategies. Alliance University has incorporated that kind of niche subjects and training into the curriculum itself, and the result is that the employability of their graduates has increased dramatically, and their prospective employers have one job less to do. Unlike many of their peers where industry interaction is a separate initiative, Alliance has industry interaction by design. The structure of their Advisory Board is set up to ensure this. They are top-notch academicians and consultants from some of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best universities. They are the kind of people with whom even the SEASONAL MAGAZINE

undertaken at Alliance University, this is used as a guidepost. AU believes that the secret to success in research is all about attracting and motivating the right kind of people who are academically rigorous scholars, and who are analytical as well as disciplined enough to deliver sound judgment. Alliance scholars rigorously apply the full range of research methodologies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; clinical, empirical, & experimental â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as appropriate to the problem they are attempting to solve. A groundbreaking research outcome is never an accident, and it requires a great deal

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of coordination between various stakeholders. The Alliance edge is that they share faculty time, student ideas, alumni access, industry interactions, and research support, apart from other physical and intangible resources. More than half of all the startups in India are in Bangalore. Nobody did anything to make that happen, and it was a natural outcome of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leadership in having the largest engineering and research talent pool in the country. As a university headquartered in such a great city for startups, Alliance is putting their best efforts to leverage that edge. Well-

conceived startups in Bangalore have a greater chance for attracting funds, and becoming successful eventually. Alliance is prepared to handhold their startups, and get them up and running. Secondly, entrepreneurship develop ment comes naturally to Alliance as they are the pioneers and leaders in conducting MBA programs with specialization in Family Business. Businesses in India are largely familyowned and family-driven, even when they are large listed entities, and Alliance is adding great value into this domain by helping the sector to professionalize.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook Leads to Depression, Says Study

Google to Identify Diabetic Blindness Using AI Millions of individuals with diabetes prick a finger multiple times each day to monitor their blood glucose levels or to take insulin. It's a painful and expensive process. The disease is related foot ulcers can prompt to amputation of the limb while diabetic retinopathy (DR) can deny individuals of their sight. Somewhere in the range of 415 million diabetics worldwide are at danger of this visual affliction and a large number of those living with it lack the adequate health care access needed to treat it. That is the only reason Google is training its deep learning Artificial Intelligence (AI) to spot DR before it turns into a problem - and without the assistance of an on-site doctor.

recent study has found an association between social comparison on Facebook and depression.

between online social networking and depression may be very complex and associated with factors like age and gender.

The Lancaster University review of existing research suggested that comparing yourself with others on Facebook is more likely to lead to feelings of depression than making social comparisons offline.

In cases where there is a significant association with depression, this is because comparing yourself with others can lead to “rumination” or overthinking.

That’s one of the findings from a review of all the research on the links between social networking and depression by David Baker and Dr Guillermo Perez Algorta from Lancaster University. They examined studies from 14 countries with 35,000 participants aged between 15 and 88. There are among 1.8 billion people on online social networking sites worldwide, with Facebook alone having more than 1 billion active users. Concerns over the effect on mental health led the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2011 to define “Facebook depression” as a “depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.” The study found that the relationship SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Negative comparison with others when using Facebook was found to predict depression via increased rumination Frequent posting on Facebook was found to be associated with depression via rumination However, the frequency, quality and type of online social networking is also important. Facebook users were more at risk of depression when they: Felt envy triggered by observing others Accepted former partners as Facebook friends Made negative social comparisons Made frequent negative status updates Gender and personality also influenced the risk, with women and people with neurotic personalities more likely to become depressed.

When they say without an onsite doctor—they mean it. At its most sensitive, the system stayed away from both false negatives and false positives more than 90 percent of the time, surpassing the National Institutes of Health's recommended standard of no less than 80 percent exactness and precision for diabetic retinopathy screens. The group would like to extend the scope of this system to have the capacity to diagnose the disease from more complex 3D images in addition to the conventional 2D fundus photographs. The group is likewise investigating automating the diagnostic process to better serve patients in remote locations who may somehow not have admittance to trained specialists.

HEALTH

INDIAN ORIGIN DOCTORS IN UAE SAY INDIANS MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF HEART ATTACKS & STROKES

INDIANS ARE MORE LIKELY TO FACE PREMATURE DEATH DUE TO HEART ATTACKS AND STROKES OWING TO GENETIC FACTORS AS COMPARED TO PEOPLE OF OTHER NATIONALITIES, ACCORDING TO DOCTORS IN THE UAE. everal studies have indicated that Indians are more likely to be affected by this problem at an earlier age as compared to Westerners, said Dinesh Babu, consultant of cardiovascular disease at Medeor Hospital Abu Dhabi in UAE. In the West, the onset of heart diseases usually occurs in the 60-70 age group but in the Indian subcontinent, heart disease sets in people in their 40s and 50s, Babu was quoted as saying. Studies conducted on Indians living in the US, Canada, Europe and Singapore have established this, said Babu. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Very high incidences of heart disease and stroke have been reported in Indians at an early age, he said. Statistics show that cardiovascular diseases, including strokes and heart attacks, are the two major causes of

Pakistanis and Bangladeshis also have almost the same genetic profile but Indians being the largest community in the UAE, more cases naturally are reported from them

premature loss of life. The underlying reason for both health crises is due to the narrowing of these blood vessels owing to cholesterol deposits. The condition is due to the gene behaviour that posits higher cholesterol deposits than normal as a result of which blockages are more common, said Babu. Pakistanis and Bangladeshis also have almost the same genetic profile but Indians being the largest community in the UAE, more cases naturally are reported from them, he said. "Genetically speaking, people from the subcontinent have smaller arteries. This compounds the problem of cholesterol deposit," said Paul S Thoppil, interventional cardiologist at NMC Hospital in Abu Dhabi.

POLITICS Harish Khare

ALL HERO WORSHIP AND NO CRITICISM MAKES CITIZENRY A DULL SPECTATOR THE UNHEALTHY CONCENTRATION OF POWER AND AUTHORITY IN ONE MAN CAN ONLY BE A RECIPE FOR UNHAPPY CONSEQUENCES, ESPECIALLY AT A TIME WHEN THE RESERVE BANK OF INDIA, LONG BELIEVED TO BE A TRUSTWORTHY ALLY OF THE CITIZENRY, SUCCUMBS TO THE TYRANNY OF EXECUTIVE POWER.

e do not want another 'god' as the political leader of our country… We must not only not have any more gods...we must also 'devalue' the exaggerated importance that we have given to the office of Prime Minister." The author of this wisdom lies gravely unwell in a nursing home in New Delhi. Much before old age and its attendant infirmities took their toll, this man used to articulate - on behalf of the BJP - wise propositions of good governance and democratic accountability. His name is Jaswant Singh, the most suave, educated and SEASONAL MAGAZINE

responsible minister in the Vajpayee era.

Jaswant Singh had made this formulation in 1987. That was the age when the Prime Minister had more than four hundred seats in the Lok Sabha; he also had a majority in the Rajya Sabha. He had a shouting brigade who would keep the presiding officers in check; he had an officer in the PMO who would publicly deride Opposition leaders as “cretins”. That was the age of prime ministerial supremacy and it produced many unmitigated national disasters. Let us dig a little deeper in history. The year is 1971. The legend has it that the

legendary soldier, Sam Manekshaw, told off an impatient Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that he would not be prepared for "action" in East Pakistan till he was satisfied that adequate preparations had been made and logistical wrinkles sorted out. The Prime Minister had the good sense to heed the sound advice of a sound officer, and lived thereafter to see the Indian armed forces settle Pakistan's hash. These glimpses from the past are being recalled to reiterate the lessons the recent history has taught us. And, the unambiguous lesson, from 1975-77

onward, has been a cultivated distrust in the idea of an omnipotent Prime Minister and his overweening ambition. Beware of a too powerful Prime Minister. India is too vast a country to be at the mercy of a Prime Minister and his wisdom. The demonetisation mess painfully brings home the correctness of Jaswant Singh's caution against elevating a leader as "god" who must be rendered unambiguous obedience and obeisance. The utter incompetence in implementing the "demonetisation" drive merely underlines the total abdication by the Reserve Bank of India of its institutional autonomy and voice. The RBI Governor was duty-bound to tell the Prime Minister to slow down, just as General Sam Manekshaw once told another Prime Minister. The country is a daily witness how the Finance Ministry officials are encroaching upon the RBI's institutional space and making a mess of it. This is incongruent. Here is a regime whose senior-most impresarios take considerable pride in micromanagement and have built up a formidable reputation in Gujarat as control freaks - which was so callously inattentive to the post-demonetisation dislocations. The very arbitrariness and the resulting chaos are being sought to be palmed off as "worth the pain" because Prime Minister Modi “means well”. No one is sure to what extent the Finance Minister, leave alone the rest of the Cabinet members, were privy to this so-called "surgical strike" on black money. The country remains in the dark as to whose counsel the Prime Minister sought while firmaning this most drastic and draconian change in currency notes. Not since Morarji Desai's gold control (in the wake of the Chinese aggression) order has any other single governmental initiative touched the lives of so many Indians. Yet the collective thinking and collective decision-making appear to have been done away with. Already the blue-book of personality cult is operational. Ideological, political and moral approval is sought for the Prime Minister and his “bold” move. Anyone disagreeing with the Leader is being called a habitual dissenter, a fake secularist, and a potential “deshdrohi”. Anyone dissenting is dismissed and

Urjit Patel ridiculed as an accomplice of the corrupt and the terrorist. The officials down the line have interpreted this kingly intolerance as a simple licence to shut people up. For example, in Indore, the local officials have outlawed any criticism on the social media of the demonetisation decision because they think "internet social media wars" could disrupt social peace. The Leader can disrupt the daily lives of the millions and millions of citizens but no citizen can have a right to share his/her plight or vent anger about being denied one's own money. On the other hand, the Prime Minister's Office uses the very social media to conduct an "opinion poll" of its own and claims wide public approval for the demonetisation move. Why was one individual - however popular, wise, and honest - allowed to undertake this experiment in monetary Stalinism? Collectivist impulses of the State have been let loose. Millions and millions of households have been forced to surrender their meagre savings to the banks. The mopped-up savings will now be available to the Omnipotent Sarkar, to be dispersed as per the preference of the ruling clique. If Stalin could force the Soviet citizens to donate their labour for industrialisation and for the glory of “motherland,” we can also force our people to cough up their hard-earned savings to fight off the evil Pakistan. The minatory penetration of a Leviathan State is complete and total even in the

remotest part of the land; each day the State issues firmans on how much and how a citizen can use his own money. All because the Leader wanted to be “bold” and to “transform” India, like no other Indian leader had done these last 70 years. In the best of the Stalinist traditions the (virtual) mobs are being encouraged to denounce anyone who dare question the ruling regime's preferences and priorities. We are manufacturing new orthodoxies: any governmental initiative-good, bad or malevolent - will not be questioned if it is declared to be in aid of fighting “corruption, black money, terrorism and counterfeiting of currency.” It is demanded of the citizens that they put up with the “inconvenience” in “our fight” against these presumed objectives. As in Comrade Stalin's days, endorsements for the regime are expected. Expectedly, the venerable Ratan Tata has led the chorus of approval. Just stand up and applaud. A wise king was always advised to leave his subject unmolested of his two possessions - jameen (land) and jorru (womenfolk). Rulers, democratic or authoritarian, have faced most primaeval resistance whenever they have sought to take liberties with their citizens' land or women. Now, we have witnessed a new experiment with a democratically elected king putting his hand in the subject's jeb (pocket). Consequences will be there. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

STATE By GS Radhakrishna

WHY ANDHRA CM NAIDU HAS ROPED IN BAHUBALI DIRECTOR RAJAMOULI FOR DESIGNING AMARAVATI THE CHIEF MINISTER DOES NOT WANT NEW ANDHRA CAPITAL AMARAVATI TO BE A REPLICA OF GLASS-TOWERED DUBAI OR SINGAPORE. NAIDU HOPES BAHUBALI DIRECTOR RAJAMOULI WILL GIVE NEW ANDHRA CAPITAL A GRAND TELUGU TOUCH. nhappy that designs submitted by international consultants for the new capital of Andhra Pradesh do not have an Indian flavour, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has roped in Telugu director Srisaila Sri Rajamouli to give the city of Amaravati a Telugu touch. Rajamouli is the director of last year’s blockbuster Bahubali: The beginning, a period fantasy movie about two brothers battling for the ancient kingdom of Mahishmati. The movie featured lavish

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sets and elaborate computer-generated imagery, or CGI, complete with grand temples, palaces, gigantic statues, and massive waterfalls. It was dubbed in several languages including Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada. Rajamouli is, however, expected to begin work on the Amaravati project only from next April after completing work on Bahubali-2. “If I want Persian, European and Asian architecture I did rather go visit them,” Naidu said at a meeting of the Capital Region Development Agency, the

regulatory and planning authority for the new capital region, in the first week of December. “But at my home and work place, I want a representation of our history, folklore and mythology.” In the past, Rajamouli has spoken of the deep influence the immensely popular mythological series of Amar Chitra Katha comics had on him. The Indian Express reported that last week, an architect from the UK-based architecture and integrated design studio Fosters and Partners, which is involved with a few Amaravati projects, met Rajamouli to get his “inputs on

Andhra Pradesh’s culture, history and traditions”.

The Rajmouli effect According to the master plan as displayed by the Capital Region Development Agency, the capital region will be spread over 7,420 sq km on both sides of the Krishna river at the centre of which will be the new capital city, occupying an area of 212 sq km. Naidu found that the designs for government buildings like the Secretariat, Assembly, Raj Bhavan and the High Court, which form the core of the new city – submitted by international experts from Japan, China, Korea and the US, who are part of a consortium engaged in developing Amaravati – lacked an Indian ethos. Asked about his assignment with the state government, Rajamouli initially refused to comment. But he confirmed the offer to film reporters early this week. “It is a challenge and I have to work on brick and mortar more than graphics as final product,” he said. Naidu has informally discussed with Rajamouli how the Krishna waterfront could be developed into a cultural arena for the promotion of Telugu fine arts and traditions. Officials in the Chief Minister’s Office said that Naidu was keen on Rajamouli from the beginning. Said a senior spokesman at the Chief Minister’s Office: “The name of Rajamouli was on top of the list after hundreds of designs for waterfront facilities and the central capital domain were scrutinised and rejected by the chief minister who was keen that Amaravati should be a role model Indian city and not a replica of Dubai or Singapore.” Rajamouli is known to be a stickler for perfection who is not comfortable working in a bureaucratic environment. Those in the film industry talk of past instances where the director walked out of the offices of ministers and the Director General of Police after being made to wait for over an hour. Members of his core team say that designing Amaravati would be a challenging project for the director. “We do a lot in films in the virtual space,” said a team member on

condition of anonymity. “I wonder what our sir [Rajamouli] can do in brick and mortar.”

An earlier offer In 2015, Naidu had approached Rajamouli to design a colourful platform to host the foundation laying ceremony of Amaravati at Uddandarayunipalem village. But Rajamouli, who usually avoids political attention, had politely declined the assignment, and the job was picked up by another Telugu film director, Koratala Shiva. At the meeting with the Capital Region Development Agency earlier this month, Naidu advised officials to rope in Indian designers, particularly SS Rajamouli, by using the good offices of veteran film director K Raghavendra Rao, who is also the electronic media advisor to the state government. Rao, the father of glamour sets and costume design in the Telugu film industry, is also Rajamouli’s mentor. It is Rao who gave the director a break to shoot television advertisements, serials and then his first film, Student No-1, in 2001. Cinema star and former Chief Minister NT Rama Rao, who is the founder of the ruling Telugu Desam Party and Chief Minister Naidu’s father-in-law, had used the services of Raghavendra Rao to design sets for his campaigns too.

Pomp and show The Telugu Desam Party, originally born

out of the fan clubs of NT Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR, has always clubbed politics with film glamour. The Mahanadu events, or annual conferences, of the party have always showcased the party and government. These events have had grand platforms where speeches and cultural events were held. People should know what we are doing and hence, just as we appear before cameras with mascara and paint, politicians also should appear before public in good shape, NTR was known to tell his party leaders. It was NTR who took the oath-taking ceremony of the chief minister out from Raj Bhavan’s staid durbar hall to a lavishly-decorated platform in festooned open grounds before a sea of admirers. Naidu has continued the tradition. In 2014, the Andhra Pradesh chief minister took oath from a glittering dais on a huge field near a state highway between Vijayawada and Guntur. The mandate of the state Information and Public Relations Department, which hosts all such events, is to make it as glamorous as possible to ensure widespread media publicity. In true Telugu Desam Party tradition, Amaravati is poised to get a touch of Telugu cinema’s lavish sets. But will Amaravati compete with Mahishmati, the mythical kingdom in Bahubali? With Rajamouli and Naidu in charge, anything, really, could unfold. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

COVER STORY

PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES

EMERGING ON INNOVATION

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elect private varsities across the country are emerging as leaders based on their innovative initiatives in academics, research, tie-ups, industry interactions, and start-up incubation. Every few years there emerges new challenges in the industrial and business world, and the current fiscal of 2016-17 hasn't been any exception, due to India's unprecedented demonetization program. Keeping aside the merits and demerits of demonetization, there is no doubt whatsoever that demonetization has changed and would further change India Inc forever. While conventional businesses are set to struggle more, digital businesses are likely to find the going easier from now on. Every such change in the corporate world, of course affects the academic world of higher education. Last year itself India saw the effects of corporate changes, when many large recruiters couldn't keep their promises on campus recruited students from IITs and IIMs. Amidst such rapidly changing corporate scenarios, one thing is certain - only those private universities capable of dynamic changes are going to thrive or even survive in the future. In this issue, Seasonal Magazine brings you a few such emerging leaders, based on their innovative streaks. Learning has moved beyond classrooms and labs for sure. This is an age of learning through industry interactions, international tie-ups, exchange programs, research orientation, live projects, internships, alumni mentoring, start-up incubation, conferences, seminars, workshops, social outreach, competitions, debates, and even management training through team sports. Like in USA and elsewhere in the developed world, India can expect to see more and more younger entrepreneurs, in their late teens or early twenties, whose start-ups will get incubated at their varsities successfully before moving out by attracting angel investments, venture capital, and private equity. While all these new age values are critical for success, of equal importance are the unchanging virtues of education like respect for merit, need for hardwork, and a productive relationship between the faculty and students. Seasonal Magazine's selection of emerging universities takes into account such conventional values too. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

MOBILE

XIAOMI'S INDIA REVENUE TOPS $1 BILLION IN 2016 Xiaomi, which entered the Indian market less than two years ago, says its revenue in India in 2016 has crossed $1 billion (roughly Rs. 6.800 crores). Based in China, Xiaomi forayed into India with the Xiaomi Mi 3 smartphone in July 2014, and has since expanded its portfolio to include speakers, earphones, power banks, air purifiers, fitness bands, VR headsets, power banks, and accessories. Xiaomi India head Manu Kumar Jain recently wrote in social media that, "Based on what we know, we are the first company to cross $1 billion in such a short period." According to Jain, Xiaomi crossed some more milestones in 2016 as well. In terms of shipments, he wrote that Xiaomi is one of the top three smartphone brands as of Q3 2016. Xiaomi also says it sold over 2 million smartphones in India, crossing that milestone in Q3 2016, a 150 percent year on year growth from the same period in 2015. Jain also pointed out that the Redmi Note 3 sold 2.3 million devices in six months, making the Xiaomi smartphone the most shipped device being sold

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online, he added. He also added that the Xiaomi Redmi 3S (and Xiaomi Redmi 3S Prime), and Redmi Note 3 were the top selling devices during Flipkart's Big Billion Days, and Amazon's Great Indian Sale, respectively. These Xiaomi devices in particular were great picks in terms of value for money, and so it's not surprising that they also contributed a lot to Xiaomi India's bottomline. Jain said that the Redmi 3S (and Redmi 3S Prime) and Redmi Note 3 together account for nearly 50 percent of the marketshare among the top 10 phones in India. Xiaomi's announcement comes shortly after the company announced that it sold more than 1 million smartphones in

India in 18 days, but it is now facing increased competition from a number of sources. While Xiaomi might have pioneered the "value-performance" segment in India, others Chinese companies are also making their presence felt in the space now; at the same time, the higher end but still budget segment is now dominated by OnePlus, and the OnePlus 3T is seen as genuine competition to phones that cost twice as much. Xiaomi's flagship Mi 5 was also one of the best phones of 2016, but it's now been completely overshadowed by the OnePlus. Xiaomi's certainly gotten off to an amazing start in India, but the question for it, going into 2017, is whether it can transition from a sprint to a marathon.

HOUSING

Needed: 18 Million Houses. Lying Vacant: 9 Million Houses. This is the situation in Indian cities on an aggregate, and what is causing this includes speculative investments, rent control laws, tax issues, as well as personal preferences. here are nine million vacant houses in Indian cities. At the same time, the Central government estimates that there is a shortage of more than 18 million houses. Is it not possible to halve this shortage by bringing these nine million homes to the market? The solution, alas, is not that simple. Let us try and break down this conundrum by looking at the reasons for this large vacancy. In pole position, and by a large margin, is the speculative nature of the real estate market in India. It is fairly obvious that investment in real estate is a key investment strategy, especially to park and regularise cash

and other assets, and has been since the real estate boom following the liberalisation of the sector in the early 2000s. And it comes with fantastic returns to boot. So, for well-off people with extra cash, it has made a whole lot of sense to buy real estate, whether plots of land or apartments in any of the thousands of peri-urban developments mushrooming around our cities. The investor would also get significant social security off such an investment, in our environment of limited social benefits of citizenship. Pros and cons of renting out Would it not make sense for an investor

to make an income off a real estate asset that is lying vacant by giving it out on rent? Yes and no, it seems, because the trade-offs are not as easy to balance. The cons include some investment in management and upkeep of the property as well as paying double the amount of property tax than what an empty house would attract, at least in most cities. It is, after all, seen as a commercial activity. In fact, if a house is converted into a paying guest or hostel, even water and electricity supply is likely to be charged at commercial rates and not at residential rates. Added to this mix are the dreaded Rent Control Acts â&#x20AC;&#x201C; state-legislated tenant

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protection laws that literally froze rents and halted evictions. The rent control laws were initially enacted in some states in the period between the two world wars, which were periods of intense inflation in the housing market, and subsequently in other states and provinces. Even today, large parts of the island city in Mumbai are under rent control, implying that tenants in the area may be paying rents fixed in the 1940s. While the laws were likely quite effective in preventing homelessness in the era they were formulated in, they eventually backfired. Landlords, big and small, became increasingly disinclined to risk the asset and income value of their real estate as it became impossible to increase rents or sometimes to even recover their homes. The practice of letting out houses or accommodation started becoming less attractive as a result of these risks. The Rent Acts, thus, proved detrimental to the housing market over time, as they choked investment in the rental housing market. Subverting the rules For those who rent, do you know why you most commonly sign a residential rental agreement for only 11 months? Because in most states and cities, an agreement of a year or more automatically comes under the purview of the Regulation Act of 1908. This Act, and the local Rent Acts, have left an impression in the very memory of the housing market. In this are hidden two factors: one, that nobody knows that a majority of the states in the country have now revised their Rent Acts in order to rid them of the most protectionist kind of provisions; and two, the housing market has already subverted these Acts and found ways around them, such as signing agreements for only 11 months, implying that there is agreement on the part of the landlord and the tenant that the Act is not relevant to them. In Mumbai, for example, a sitting tenant receives a pagdi – a premium amount between one to two times the market value of a house – in order for the landlord to recover the property or transfer it to another tenant. Another largely benign form of working around the Acts has been to simply not register rental agreements with the designated authorities. A survey by the National Sample Survey Office, under the SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, in 2010 showed that one in six rented houses had hardly any form of written agreement at all, let alone an agreement that was registered with the authorities. Now, looping this information back into our original question – why is there a shortage of 18 million houses and an available yet vacant stock of nine million houses at the same time? – we could surmise that a combination of rent control, local taxes and charges, and personal preferences are the reason. We could further argue that if these are somewhat rationalised, the speculative value of a residential investment could be enhanced with an income value, thereby leaving no one at a loss. Even the revenue that the government or its agencies would lose by equalising taxes and service rates for owned and rented residential buildings would likely be made up by more houses coming under their net. Yet, it is still not that simple. The overwhelming shortage of housing in Indian cities – up to 95% – is within the lower-income groups, that is, households that earn less than Rs 2 lakhs a year. Whichever definition of affordable housing one goes by, assuming that enabling the release of these nine million houses into the market will mean that millions of poor families will get a house is an optimistic stretch. At best, we can hope that some pressure on housing at the upper end of the market will come down, leading to a reduced capture of low-income housing by middle-income groups.

The solution Then, what are the options for the income poor in our cities, and what can governments do to ease their housing condition? The fact is that lower-income households and localities have already largely addressed their housing demand in their own ways – through informal housing. The key characteristic of informal housing is that it can attract and absorb diverse housing demand and supply streams. For lower-income groups migrating to cities or accessing the urban economy, informal settlements are key places for housing choices. Not only is housing more affordable and better located here, tenant-landlord relations also transcend rent laws and regulations, and services such as water are available at affordable rates through agents and groupings. Here, the tax net simply is not relevant, considering the grossly inefficient property tax collection mechanisms of most municipalities. Some seminal studies on rental housing in poor settlements have shown that landlords and tenants actually share a mutually beneficial relationship, and far from being the exploitative capitalist, the typical landlord in a poor settlement is actually equally poor, if not poorer, than their tenant. Incremental development of housing to rent out to young families and in-migrants is, in fact, a common livelihood response of poor households. In such a scenario, the government’s aim to increase the supply of rental housing for lower-income groups through “social rental housing “ and governmentprovided rental housing – the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation’s Draft National Urban Rental Housing Policy, for instance – may be noble but ill-founded, at least at the moment. Instead, the government may generate better outcomes by slowly bringing these informal settlements into the formal housing market by providing basic services such as electricity, water supply, sanitation, street lighting, roads, waste management, and an enabling environment for gaining more tenure security. In fact, it may even consider using the vast tracts of its own land that are occupied by slums as “rental land”, along with service up-gradation and tenure security, to move large populations out of housing poverty.

(Credit: Scroll)

SUSTAINABILITY

HOW ROADS ROADS SHATTER SHATTER HOW EARTH'S SURFACE SURFACE INTO INTO EARTH'S 6,00,000 FRAGMENTS FRAGMENTS AND AND 6,00,000 AFFECT ITS ITS ECO ECO SYSTEM SYSTEM AFFECT ROADS HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR HUMANS TO ACCESS ALMOST EVERY REGION BUT THIS COMES AT A VERY HIGH COST ECOLOGICALLY TO THE PLANET'S NATURAL WORLD. arth’s surface is shattered by roads into over 600,000 fragments – more than half of which are smaller that one square kilometre – severely reducing the ability of ecosystems to function effectively, a new study has found. Roads have made it possible for humans to access almost every region but this comes at a very high cost ecologically to the planet’s natural world. Despite substantial efforts to conserve the world’s natural heritage, large tracts of valuable roadless areas remain unprotected, researchers said. The researchers from the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development in Germany used a dataset of 36 million kilometres of roads across the landscapes of the earth. They are dividing them into more than 600,000 pieces that are not directly affected by roads. Of these remaining roadless areas only seven per cent are larger than 100 square kilometres. The largest tracts are to be found in the tundra and the boreal forests of North America and Eurasia, as well as some tropical areas of Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. Only nine per cent of these areas undisturbed by roads are protected. Roads introduce many problems to nature. For instance, they interrupt gene flow in animal populations,facilitate the spread of pests and diseases, and increase soil erosion and the contamination of rivers and wetlands. Then there is the free movement of people made possible by road development in previously remote

areas, which has opened these areas up to severe problems such as illegal logging, poaching and deforestation. Most importantly, roads trigger the construction of further roads and the subsequent conversion of natural landscapes, a phenomenon the study labels “contagious development.” “Our global map provides guidance on the location of the most valuable roadless areas,” said Pierre Ibisch, from the Eberswalde University. In many

THE RESEARCHERS FROM THE EBERSWALDE UNIVERSITY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN GERMANY USED A DATASET OF 36 MILLION KILOMETRES OF ROADS ACROSS THE LANDSCAPES OF THE EARTH.

cases they represent remaining tracks of extensive functional ecosystems, and are of key significance to ecological processes, such as regulating the hydrological cycle and the climate,” said Ibisch. The researchers used a large data base generated through crowd-sourcing platform to produce a global map for roadless. “Our figures overestimate roadless areas, and we know many of the areas have already gone or been reduced in size,” said Monika Hoffmann from Eberswalde University. “All roads affect the environment in some shape or form including timber extraction tracks and minor dirt roads, and the impacts can be felt far beyond the road edge,” said Nuria Selva, from the Institute of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poland. “The area most severely affected is within a one kilometre band on either side of a road,” said Selva. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

TREND

The Year 'Elitism' Turned Into A Pejorative Term INTRINSICALLY LINKED TO THE BACKLASH AGAINST GLOBALIZATION, THE 'WAR' AGAINST THE ELITIST ESTABLISHMENT WAS IN FULL DISPLAY THROUGHOUT THE COURSE OF 2016, BEST MANIFESTED IN THE BREXIT REFERENDUM AND DONALD TRUMP'S ELECTION VICTORY. BUT, THE EXCESSIVE USE OF THE WORD 'ELITIST' HAS RENDERED IT MEANINGLESS AND RAISED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE IRE BEING DIRECTIONLESS AND WORSE, VINDICTIVE IN NATURE.

n academic, a politician, a journalist, a film star, a nobleman and a banker walk into a bar. They order different drinks, and sit at separate tables each doing their own thing. There is no punch line; these people do not belong together in any sensible way. Yet members of these groups and others are regularly given the same label: “elites”. Careful writers should avoid this word; it is becoming a junk-bin concept used by different people to mean wildly different things. It is easy to understand why people reach for “elites”. If pundits can agree on anything about 2016, it is surely that it has been bad for elites. Populist wave after populist wave has broken over Western politics, with a vote for Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and Italy’s loss of a popular young prime minister over a constitutional referendum that he called—and lost. The masses are out for blood, and the elites are quaking.

Words aimed more precisely serve their purpose better. Elites are an abstraction. If people are angry at bankers or at climate scientists, they should say so specifically. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Data from the Media show an even sharper spike in mentions of elites since about 2010, as article after article has tried to diagnose anger at elites.

But if you can picture those masses in your mind—pitchforks, torches, perhaps overalls—what do the elites look like? For Mr Trump, the hated elites comprise the Washington political establishment and the press. But for his own opponents, the very idea of a billionaire who lives in a golden tower swanning in and winning himself the presidency just goes to show what elite status can get you. Campaigners for Brexit railed against liberal elites—the economists, academics and journalists who warned of its consequences. But the face of the Leave campaign was Boris Johnson, an Etonand Oxford-educated toff. Michael Gove, another Leaver, said that folks were tired of “experts”. But Mr Gove, like Mr Johnson, is a former president of Oxford’s

leading debating society, the Oxford Union, and one of politics’ pointier heads. In other words, no matter who you are or what you’re campaigning for, bashing elites seems a safe bet, while admitting to being a member of an elite is an absolute no-go. The obsession with elites is relatively recent: the oldest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates back to 1823. It was only a singular noun, from a past participle in French, meaning “chosen”; from the same root as “to elect”. (Its very Frenchness may make elite such a delicious word for some Anglophones to hurl as an insult.) The OED says the English noun is “The choice part or flower (of society, or of any body or class of persons)”. This entry has not yet been updated to

include its more recent sense, the pejorative version, often plural, which can be glossed as “people with unearned privileges who keep honest folks from getting a fair shake”. Data from Google Books show the plural word “elites” beginning to be used in about 1940, with the obviously pejorative “elitist” rising from about 1960. The anti-authority cultural changes of the 1960s, it seems, brought with them a rising concern with elites and their apologists. Data from the New York Times show an even sharper spike in mentions of elites since about 2010, as article after article has tried to diagnose anger at elites. Populist anger is hardly surprising: elite financiers tanked the global economy, elite economists failed to foresee it and political elites failed to respond effectively enough. Those elites in the crosshairs had to find other elites to blame, and they did so. Elite scientists and Hollywood liberals whining about climate change cost coalminers their jobs. Elite London journalists noshing on sushi ignore the problems that hard-working northern Brits suffer as a result of immigration. Cultural elites police what can be said about minorities. And so on. But the rush to blame elites has nearly everyone in the crosshairs: Sketch Engine, a digital tool for lexicographers, finds among the common modifiers for elite not just obvious ones like “ruling”, “wealthy”, “monied”, but also “secular”, “cultural”, “educated”, “metropolitan” and “bureaucratic”. Elites are no longer “the choice part or flower” of a group, but merely anyone in a position of influence someone else thinks they do not deserve. Words aimed more precisely serve their purpose better. Elites are an abstraction. If people are angry at bankers or at climate scientists, they should say so specifically. Those seeking to diagnose the causes of the current wave of populism need to understand what populist voters are truly angry about. Those who are angry at elites generally, but can’t say more specifically who they are angry at or why, should think twice before voting for a populist who promises to find and punish those elites, whoever they are.

(Source: The Economist) SEASONAL MAGAZINE

CRICKET

UNDERSTANDING THE PRIMACY OF FITNESS AND PATIENCE THROUGH KARUN NAIR The name 'Karun Nair' didn't take too long to reverberate in Indian households. The talented young man, who had to shed considerable weight at a young age and miraculously survived a boat tragedy, is an example to aspiring sportspersons about the importance of fitness and to make one's chances count especially after a near-death experience.

or almost one year, 8year-old Karun Nair was not allowed to hold the bat as he was plump. His coach Shivananda still remembers the day he joined the cricket academy on March 28, 2001. "I asked him to run and do warm-up exercises every day. But that did not deter him from his mission. Many of his age would quit if they are not given a chance to bat for one year. But this guy did everything he was asked to do without any questions. His perseverance paid off and soon he was in the Karnataka zonal team,” recalls his coach Shivananda. Another coach from his yesteryear, Fifty year old Shashidhar N evoked memories of first time he met Karun Nair. It was in the early 2000s and Karun was a 4th standard student of the Chinmayi School in Bengaluru. Shashidhar, the cricket coach of Frank Anthony Public School and the then Principal Anthony Browne spotted the young kid playing with a straight bat. “Unlike other kids of his age, he was looking for singles. He was willing to rotate the strike,” says Shashidhar. Impressed by Karun’s technique, Shashidhar and Browne then approached his parents, asking them to enroll the gifted boy in their school. “We had a very good team then. Karun’s school did not have a cricket team of its own. His parents readily shifted him to FAPS.” Shashidhar says he always knew Karun would make it big in the cricketing world. “I knew for sure that he would play in Ranji matches. But when he was playing for the Under 19 team, I watched him and knew then that he SEASONAL MAGAZINE

would go on to play for India.”

bear testimony to that statement.

Born in Jodhpur to parents Kaladharan Nair and Prema Nair – hailing from Chengannur in Alappuzha district, Karun had taken to the game playing initially in the streets of Bengalauru before soldiering on his way to the Karnataka under-15 and under-19 teams, the Indian Premier League, the senior team of his adopted State, the India A and one-day sides before receiving his call to the Indian Test team in November.

Nair has been no different from the start of his career. At 18 he had slammed 187 against Baroda Under-19s, and had followed it with 165 against Hyderabad Under-19s three weeks later. He also bowled probing off-breaks in those days.

It is difficult being Karun Nair, and that has nothing to do with the fact that he is a Jodhpur-born Keralite who plays for Karnataka and played his first 3 Tests in three corners of his vast home country. Had Indian cricket been in the doldrums, had the voids left by Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman, and, lastly, Sachin Tendulkar not been fulfilled, it would not have taken Nair this long to break through, certainly not after his magnum opus in the Ranji Trophy final of 2014-15. Virat Kohli has come up in leaps and bounds; Ajinkya Rahane has been remarkably consistent overseas; Cheteshwar Pujara, despite his relative quiet outings away from home, is finally back in his pomp; and if India need a fourth batsman (which they sometimes do not), they turn to Rohit Sharma. So Nair had to wait. Waiting comes naturally to Nair, a man who had turned 25 earlier this month. J Arunkumar, coach of Karnataka and perhaps the most sought-after man by journalists had words of praise for his talented ward: “Every time he gets to bat he looks to play long innings. Once he gets into his rhythm it is very difficult to get him out.” A jubilant Chepauk crowd (why, oh why must Chepauk have all the fun?) will

Big innings have always been a hallmark of Nair’s career, though the first gargantuan one came only in 2013. The 256 against Andhra Cricket Association XI included 20 fours and 7 sixes, but more importantly, it was played in the humidity of July. Nair batted for almost eight hours. Nair had batted at No. 5 in the Ranji Trophy final. He had come out at 31 for 4. At 84 he lost Abhimanyu Mithun. KL Rahul, having retired hurt early in the innings, returned to resume his innings. The pair added 396. Just like in the Chepauk Test, Rahul scored a big hundred (188) but was outdone by Nair (328). Nair had batted for fourteen-anda-half hours in the match, starting on Day One and departing on Day Four. Most importantly, in the sweltering March heat and humidity of Mumbai, Nair had run 138 singles in addition to

whatever he ran for his partners. The same was true during the unbeaten 303 at Chepauk. Batting in the Chennai heat is never easy even in December. It did not matter to Nair. The innings included some magnificent strokes, especially those reverse-sweeps that he executed with panache, but the most telling statistic is the fact that 151 of his runs (about half) came in singles. More astonishingly, he did not even look fatigued as the innings progressed. In fact, he even put pressure on his partner — even the remarkably fit Ravindra Jadeja — even after he had crossed the 200-mark. Greater men have caved in under these conditions. It was as much a test of fitness and endurance as it was of temperament and strokeplay. The pacing of the innings also impressed former Indian middle-order batsman,

VVS Laxman: “The way he was pushing and putting pressure on the fielders was exemplary. Even after he reached 200 he was running the first run hard along with Jadeja.” How can Nair bat for so long? How can he run so many and so hard, and still not get fatigued? How does he retain his concentration level? “The trainers of the Indian team and Karnataka Ranji Trophy team work very hard with everyone,” said Arunkumar, whose playing days had overlapped with Dravid’s. Arunkumar also mentioned protein-rich diets the cricketers are supposed to follow these days. Nair adheres to the chart very strictly, apart from working rigorously on his fitness. One could not help but be reminded of Pullela Gopichand insisting Saina Nehwal, and later, PV Sindhu, both had chicken in their diets. This leads people to point

“UNLIKE OTHER KIDS OF HIS AGE, HE WAS LOOKING FOR SINGLES. HE WAS WILLING TO ROTATE THE STRIKE,” SAYS SHASHIDHAR. IMPRESSED BY KARUN’S TECHNIQUE, SHASHIDHAR AND BROWNE THEN APPROACHED HIS PARENTS, ASKING THEM TO ENROLL THE GIFTED BOY IN THEIR SCHOOL. “WE HAD A VERY GOOD TEAM THEN. KARUN’S SCHOOL DID NOT HAVE A CRICKET TEAM OF ITS OWN. HIS PARENTS READILY SHIFTED HIM TO FAPS.”

MORE ASTONISHINGLY, HE DID NOT EVEN LOOK FATIGUED AS THE INNINGS PROGRESSED. IN FACT, HE EVEN PUT PRESSURE ON HIS PARTNER — EVEN THE REMARKABLY FIT RAVINDRA JADEJA — EVEN AFTER HE HAD CROSSED THE 200-MARK. GREATER MEN HAVE CAVED IN UNDER THESE CONDITIONS. IT WAS AS MUCH A TEST OF FITNESS AND ENDURANCE AS IT WAS OF TEMPERAMENT AND STROKEPLAY.

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dangerous thing for the opposition. If a batsman can run that hard and accelerate at will without putting his wicket at stake, you have to get him out early in his innings. Once he sets in you are doomed, for not only is he going to throw it away, but his ability to rotate strikes is going to make it immensely difficult to contain him.

fingers at whether wrong diet forms a significant part of the reason behind India’s relative lack of success in noncricket sports at the highest level. Laxman shared a similar thought on Nair’s tremendous stamina: “Karun has worked very hard on his fitness, and because of that he does not feel tired at all. Even after he reached 300 he looked fresh, which showed how fit a cricketer he is.” Laxman also went on to add that the focus on fitness has become a feature among contemporary Indian cricketers. Fitness. Diet. Fitness. Diet. But was cricket not the sport where fitness was never paramount even if you were a champion? Anil Kumble and Inzamamul-Haq were not outstanding athletes, but they were certainly legends of the sport… so why is fitness relevant these days? Most cricket fans associate fitness with wicketkeeping, acrobatic fielding and running between the wickets. That basic level of fitness is a basic prerequisite in all sports of the era. However, cricket needs fitness of a different kind, for you may be required to focus for hours at a stretch, hours more than you are expected to do in almost any other sport. Cricket’s fitness involves — apart from agility and strength — stamina and ability to concentrate. One cannot afford to be caught unaware. And that focus can happen if the body supports the batsman over those long hours under trying conditions. No batsman can allow himself the luxury of losing focus even for a single delivery, for that is what it takes to end even the finest performances: how often have we seen dazzling cameos ending in a moment’s lapse of concentration? Laxman added that playing big innings has a lot to do about pacing the innings properly as well. Scoring big is also a habit. “He has scored a triple-hundred before, so he knows how to pace his innings, how to accelerate, when to accelerate,” Laxman said. Laxman himself, apart from that 281, was also the first to score two triple-hundreds in Ranji Trophy. A terrible run out at Mohali - largely due to no fault of his - was an aberration. Unfortunately, the Indian middle-order SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Arunkumar also mentioned protein-rich diets the cricketers are supposed to follow these days. Nair adheres to the chart very strictly, apart from working rigorously on his fitness. One could not help but be reminded of Pullela Gopichand insisting Saina Nehwal, and later, PV Sindhu, both had chicken in their diets. has set standards so high (it is not easy to come to bat after Pujara and Kohli and ahead of an outrageously strong lower middle-order) that a section of the media wanted to leave him out of the Chepauk Test, more so since it was a dead-rubber Test and an uncapped Manish Pandey was sitting in the reserves. Others, however, thought Nair should be persisted with. This included Laxman, who weighed in immediately after the Wankhede Test that he “would like to see guys like KL Rahul and Karun Nair to contribute in the Chennai Test.” The Indian team can do with similar wishes. Of course, he had the license to go for the kill. The indications were clear: India had wanted to have a go at England before stumps. The instructions were clear: Nair and Jadeja had to accelerate. So quickly did Nair get his runs that he made Kohli change his mind. As Laxman pointed out, “Nair played his shots, and while doing that, he came close to his triple-hundred, which forced Virat to delay the declaration.” The shots, some of them breathtaking, were mostly risk-free, which is a

In other words, the firepower in the Indian bench is almost intimidating. Ishant Sharma has sat out for most of the series but bowled probing spells in Chennai. Bhuvneshwar Kumar had bowled brilliantly in West Indies and then in Kolkata. Jayant Yadav has taken wickets and scored runs, the second suit earning him more fans than even he would have imagined. And Nair has scored a triple-hundred. What lies in future for Nair once Rahane returns? Should he replace Rahane, a tried-and-tested success, with immediate effect? Or should he be benched despite his 303? Laxman wants to wait: “Let us see how the ODIs and T20Is turn out. Depending on that, and on what combination we need against Australia, the selectors will take a call. While it is difficult to drop anyone who has scored a triplehundred, Rahane has also done really well over the last 2-3 years. It will be a tough decision for the selectors … A good bench strength is the salient feature of any champion side; and I believe this Indian side is a champion side.” Arunkumar voiced the same opinion: “I’m sure the selectors, with due respect to Rahane, will have to take a very tough call. Karun has got a triple-hundred, and his current form is really good. I’m sure the selectors, the captain and the coach will look into all that.” On form Nair has few peers. His four Ranji Trophy outings this season have earned him 326 runs at 109. He has topped the 45-mark in each of his last four seasons. Rahane’s return will indeed complicate things, for Nair, just like Rahane, makes the most of the opportunities he gets: he waited for the break, he waited for that one big day, and when he happened, he made sure it reached gargantuan levels. The job of the selectors is cut out, but the team and fans cannot help but sit smugly at the riches India have in their middle-order.

KARNATAKA: Malleshwaram 23441738, 737 & 637 I Jayanagar 26538140, 26536899 I Bommanahalli 25733020 I K R Puram 25615151 I Yelahanka 28460443 I Whitefield 22716595 I Kengeri 28488155 I Nelamangala 27722020 I Mysuru 2500797, 2512482 I Hubballi 2358564, 2257029 I TELANGANA Abids 24753183, 7784, 63777 I Kukkatapally 23057163, 23057263 I Secundrabad, 27712993, 27712994 I Warangal 2448787, 2458787 I ANDHRA PRADESH Vijayawada 2482587, 72587 & 88 Vizag 2525259, 2737629 I Tirupathi 2244601, 2240950 I Kurnool 278180, 228180 I Nellore 2335855, 2335856 I Rajamundry 2430717, 2475717 I Anantapuram 244173 I Guntur 2222587 I Kakinada 2342555 I TAMIL NADU Chennai 24349364, 24354453 I Coimbatore 2470438, 2470017 I Kumbakonam 2402280, 2423480 I Trichy 2760208 2760209 I Madurai 2530229 2530299 I Nagercoil 276900, 277111 I Dindigul 2441445, 9025511445 I Erode 2255664, 2255661 I Chidambaram 222202 I Villupuram 229666, 229667 I Karaikudi 230229 I KERALA Cochin 2375051 I Calicut 4044033 I Palghat I UTTAR PRADESH Noida 2455203, 2455201-2 I MAHARASHTRA

NEWS IN BRIEF SUSHANT, FARHAN WALK THE RAMP AT GQ FASHION NIGHTS 2016

Actor Sushant Singh Rajput walked the ramp for designer duo Shantanu and Nikhil Mehra while Farhan Akhtar walked for designer Rajesh Pratap Singh at the GQ Fashion Nights 2016. Further, Anil Kapoor walked for designer Kunal Rawal. Hrithik Roshan, Anushka Sharma, Aamir Khan and his 'Dangal' co-stars Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanya Malhotra were among the attendees at the event.

BENGALURU GETS INDIA’S 1ST HERITAGE MILITARY TRANSPORT PARK India's first Heritage Military Transport Park was inaugurated in Bengaluru on Monday to document and educate future generations on the contributions of the mechanical transport fleet to the armed forces. Currently, five vintage vehicles – Jeep, Jonga, Nissan Vehicles, 1 Ton and Shaktiman - are on display and more vehicles will be added in the future.

ALIA, ANUSHKA PART OF MASAND'S SHOW THE ACTRESSES ROUNDTABLE Alia Bhatt, Anushka Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Vidya Balan and Radhika Apte will appear on this year's edition of film critic Rajeev Masand's show 'The Actresses Roundtable'. "A Monday afternoon very well spent with such lovely, beautiful, inspiring... women... Love you girls," wrote Alia, while sharing a picture of herself with the other actresses on Instagram.

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APPLE PAYS RS 3 CR FINE OVER HAZARDOUS WASTE VIOLATIONS Apple has paid over Rs 3 crore in fine for operating and closing two hazardous waste processing plants without submitting the proper paperwork to California environmental regulators. Both the plants together created at least 8 lakh kilograms of electronic waste from Apple devices. Apple described its conduct as "an oversight in paperwork" that did not affect its health and safety standards.

RUSSIAN MPS ACCUSE FIFA 17 VIDEO GAME OF 'GAY PROPAGANDA' Russian lawmakers have asked the state communications oversight agency to take action against the video game FIFA 17 for violating the law against gay propaganda. The game, rated for all ages, invites users to support the English Premier League's Rainbow Laces action which campaigns to support LGBT community. According to Russian law, such propaganda can harm children's health and development.

SCIENCE

Coming, Ice to Power Electrical Devices MIT scientists, including one of Indian origin, say ice-filled wires could soon power electrical devices. Water begins boiling when it reaches at a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. It is a long known fact that the boiling and freezing points of water can change when it is confined in very small spaces. It usually drops by around 10 degrees Celsius.

filled wires could soon power electrical devices, MIT scientists that include one of Indian origin named Kumar Varoon Agrawal have said. The scientists have discovered that water has the ability to freeze solid even at high temperatures when inside tiny carbon nanotubes. Water begins boiling when it reaches at a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. It is a long known fact that the boiling and freezing points of water can change when it is confined in very small spaces. It usually drops by around 10 degrees Celsius. Water can freeze even at high temperatures, Scientists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US have found. This would normally set it boiling in carbon nanotubes the inner dimensions of which are not much bigger than a few water molecules. The discovery reveals that even very familiar materials can drastically change their state when kept inside structures that are measured in nanometres, or billionths of a metre. The discovery may lead to new applications. For example the ice-filled wires that take advantage of the unique electrical and thermal properties of ice while remaining stable at room temperature.

"If you confine a fluid to a nanocavity, you can actually distort its phase behaviour," said Michael Strano, professor at MIT, referring to how and when the substance changes between solid, liquid and gas phases. Though these effects were expected, but the enormous magnitude of the change, and its direction (raising rather than lowering the freezing point), were a complete surprise. The water solidified at a temperature of 105 degrees Celsius or more in one of the tests. The behaviour of the water changes when it is inside the tiny carbon nanotubes - structures the shape of a soda straw, made entirely of carbon atoms but only a few nanometres in

The behaviour of the water changes when it is inside the tiny carbon nanotubes structures the shape of a soda straw, made entirely of carbon atoms but only a few nanometres in diameter depends crucially on the exact diameter of the tubes.

diameter - depends crucially on the exact diameter of the tubes. The nanotubes were left open at both ends, with reservoirs of water at each opening in the experiments. Even the difference between nanotubes 1.05 nanometres and 1.06 nanometres across made a difference of tens of degrees in the apparent freezing point, the researchers found. Such extreme differences were completely unexpected. In earlier efforts to understand how water and other fluids would behave when confined to such small spaces, "there were some simulations that showed really contradictory results," he said. Part of the reason for that is many teams were not able to measure the exact sizes of their carbon nanotubes precisely, not realising that such small differences could produce such different outcomes, he added. In fact, it's surprising that water even enters into these tiny tubes in the first place, Strano said. Carbon nanotubes are thought to be hydrophobic, or water-repelling, so water molecules should have a hard time getting inside. The fact that they do gain entry remains a bit of a mystery, he said. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

NEWS IN BRIEF MIKE PENCE BELIEVES KASHMIR ISSUE NEEDS DEALMAKER TRUMP US Vice President-elect Mike Pence has said that President-elect Donald Trump could use his "extraordinary deal-making skills" to sort the Kashmir crisis between Pakistan and India. Pence further said the new administration intends to be "fully engaged" in south Asia to promote peace. This comes amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan following ceasefire violations along the border.

NEARING UNIVERSAL EDUCATION AFTER RTE: JAVADEKAR

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that 98% of the children have started going to school after the implementation of Right to Education. Claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government is focusing on the issue of brain drain, Javadekar added that all efforts are being made to check the same.

AIADMK: GRIEF OVER AMMA'S DEATH TAKES 77 LIVES The AIADMK party on Wednesday revealed that as many as 77 people have died of grief and shock over the late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's illness and death. Releasing the list of dead persons, the party announced compensation of Rs 3 lakh to their families as relief. AIADMK also announced Rs 50,000 compensation for any party worker who had attempted self-immolation.

RBI LOWERS 2016-17 GDP FORECAST TO 7.1% POST DEMONETIZATION In the wake of cash crunch following demonetisation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday lowered the growth forecast by 0.5% to 7.1% for 2016-17. This was the first bimonthly monetary policy review of RBI after demonetisation, where it decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.25%.

'THE HACKERS' AMONG TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR 2016 RUNNERS-UP The TIME magazine has named 'The Hackers' among its Person of the Year 2016 runners-up. "They made vulnerability the new normal and took aim at democracy itself," the magazine said in its announcement. "Hardly a week passed without news of some kind of digital breach, somewhere in the world, often establishing some kind of record," the magazine added.

FACEBOOK NAMED BEST AMERICAN TECH COMPANY TO WORK FOR IN '17 Facebook has dethroned home rental startup Airbnb as the best technology company to work for in 2017 in the US, according to a new list released by Glassdoor. Facebook was also the top technology company to work for three years straight from 2011. Google has been ranked as the second best technology company to work for.

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HEALTH

SMOKING UPS HEART ATTACK RISK 8-FOLD For young adults who smoke, the risk of a major heart attack is 8 times higher than for their peers who never smoked or who gave it up, a UK study found. lder adults who smoke are also more likely than nonsmokers their age to end up with heart attacks, researchers say. Many people underestimate the health risks that come with smoking, said senior author Dr. Ever Grech, of the South Yorkshire Cardiothoracic Center at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield. "Many patients seem aware there are some risks of a heart attack with smoking, but they were blissfully unaware that the risks were anything more than slightly higher than usual," Grech told Reuters Health. Smoking has been tied to an increased risk of cardiovascular problems since the 1950s, Grech and his colleagues write in the journal Heart. Smokers have heart attacks at younger ages, but no study has looked at the incidence of heart attacks among young smokers in a local population. For the new study, the researchers used data collected between 2009 and 2012 on people over age 18 in South Yorkshire. The population included 1,727 individuals who were treated for STEMIs, which are major heart attacks caused by a blockage in one of the heart's main arteries. About 49 percent of the STEMI patients were current smokers, about 27 percent were exsmokers and about 24 percent were never smokers. Applying the results to the South Yorkshire population, the researchers calculated that in a group of 100,000 people, 60 smokers under age 50 would have a heart attack every year, compared to a combined total of 7 never-smokers and former smokers in that age group. The difference is equal to about an eightfold increase in risk for young smokers, compared to non-smokers.

Likewise, the researchers found about a five-fold increase in risk among smokers ages 50 to 65 years and about a threefold increase in risk among smokers over age 65 years, compared to their nonsmoking peers.

The increased risk among smokers likely arises because smoking affects the plasticity of arteries and what happens inside them, said Dr. Umesh Khot, who is vice chair of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

Grech said the findings confirmed his observations from working in a cardiac catheterization laboratory, where doctors open clogged arteries in patients with STEMIs.

"The harms of smoking in terms of heart attacks of patients who smoke will happen a lot sooner than people think," said Khot, who wasn't involved with the new study.

"We can use this data to make people better aware of the risks and provide positive encouragement and assistance," he said.

He said it's never too late to quit smoking to reap some health benefits.

"We can use this data to make people better aware of the risks and provide positive encouragement and assistance," he said.

"For this type of heart attack known as STEMI, the risk drops off very fast," he told Reuters Health. In an editorial accompanying the new study, Dr. Yaron Arbel of Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel called for society to play a more active role in preventing and treating smoking habits in the general population through medical, legislative, commercial and educational efforts. "Without all these efforts, we will not reduce the risks associated with smoking," he wrote. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

NEWS IN BRIEF SEHWAG SANG KISHORE KUMAR'S SONGS DURING HIS 219: RAINA Virender Sehwag sang Kishore Kumar's songs while scoring a career-best 219 against West Indies in an ODI in 2011, Suresh Raina, who was at the non-striker's end had revealed after the match. Sehwag's 219, the then-highest individual ODI score, included 25 boundaries and seven sixes. Sehwag is the only player to score a double century as captain in ODIs.

RICKY PONTING NEVER WON A TEST MATCH IN INDIA AS CAPTAIN Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting has won a test match in every country he captained except India. Under Ponting, Australia played seven test matches in India, out of which India won five and remaining two ended in a draw. Ponting, who made his Test debut on December 8, 1995, against Sri Lanka at Perth, captained Australia in 77 Test matches.

PEARL BLACK S7 EDGE UNVEILED TO TAKE ON JET BLACK IPHONE 7 South Korean smartphone maker Samsung has unveiled a new glossy black variant of its Galaxy S7 Edge smartphone called 'Pearl Black', which looks similar to the 'Jet Black' iPhone 7 variant. The colour will be exclusive to the 128 GB version of the device and will be available to buy in select markets from December 9.

GROFERS LOSING RS 5.1 CRORE A MONTH NOW: CEO ALBINDER DHINDSA

T-MOBILE ANNOUNCES ONE NUMBER FOR ALL GADGETS OF A USER German mobile operator TMobile has announced a new technology called 'Digits' that lets customers use one phone number across all their connected devices. Instead of authenticating devices through SIM cards, the technology gives customers their own identity. On logging in once, a user's call history, texts, and even voicemail becomes available on all of the devices connected to that number.

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GANDHIJI ONLY INDIAN TO HAVE WON TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR Mahatma Gandhi is the only Indian to be named TIME Person of the Year, having been given the honour in 1930. The magazine described him as 'Saint Gandhi' and later named him as one of the 25 Political Icons of all time. Gandhiji's mark on world history in 1930 will undoubtedly loom the largest of all, wrote TIME.

Grofers' losses have been brought down by 30% from Rs 7.2 crore in July to Rs 5.1 crore a month now, CEO Albinder Dhindsa has claimed. Grofers is using four-wheelers instead of two wheelers for deliveries, which has increased the delivery capacity by 10%, he added. Dhindsa further claimed the average order value of Rs 750 in July has gone up to Rs 1,000.

VERIZON EXPLORING EXIT FROM YAHOO DEAL POST HACKING: REPORTS

Verizon, which agreed to buy Yahoo for $4.8 billion, is reportedly exploring either a discount or a possible exit from the deal after the search engine revealed the world's biggest e-mail hack. Yahoo, which confirmed hack of 500 million accounts in September, disclosed another hack of a billion accounts on Thursday. Verizon is currently assessing the damage from the breaches.

NEWS IN BRIEF PM MODI'S MANN KI BAAT EARNED ALL INDIA RADIO RS 4.8CR IN A YR Prime Minister Narendra Modi's radio address 'Mann ki Baat' generated Rs 4.78 crore in revenue for All India Radio through advertisements during 2015-16, according to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The Ministry further said that only the radio broadcast of Mann ki Baat is monetised and other platforms like live streaming or app-based service are not monetised.

PENTAGON BURIED STUDY THAT COULD SAVE RS 8.5L CRORE: REPORT The Pentagon could have saved $125 billion (around ?8.5 lakh crore) by simplifying its bureaucracy but buried a Defense Department study on it to avoid losing US Congress funding, according to reports. The study had found that the Pentagon employs around 10 lakh people, a part of which was redundant, allowing the billion-dollar savings.

MALTA FIRST EUROPEAN COUNTRY TO BAN 'GAY CURE' THERAPY Malta's Parliament has unanimously voted to ban gay conversion therapy, becoming the first European country to make the practice illegal. Anyone found guilty of trying to "change, repress or eliminate a person's sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression" could face fines of up to $10,700 (around Rs 7.2 lakh) and a jail term of up to a year.

80% OF MY COMPANY REPORTS TO 5 WOMEN: SQUARE CEO JACK DORSEY The CEO of both Twitter and mobile payments company Square, Jack Dorsey in an interview said, "Half of my (Square) staff is women and 80% company reports to five women". He added, "Our engineering head, our CFO, our general counsel, and our business head are all women". Dorsey further said, "We were looking for great people, and we found them".

VENEZUELA TO PRINT 20,000-BOLIVAR NOTE AMID ECONOMIC CRISIS Venezuela will launch a new 20,000bolivar banknote to help people struggling with large bundles of currency notes during the country's economic crisis. The biggest denomination banknote currently in circulation is 100 bolivars, being exchanged at around $0.02 (around Rs 1.36). This comes amid falling Venezuelan oil prices, which is driving up the import prices of goods in the country.

MALAYSIA PM URGES UN INTERVENTION TO END GENOCIDE IN MYANMAR Malaysian PM Najib Razak on Sunday called for UN intervention to stop the "genocide" of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, as he joined thousands of Rohingya protesters in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur. The Muslim-majority country has criticised Myanmar for alleged state abuse in Rakhine State, which has driven hundreds of ethnic Rohingya to flee across the border into Bangladesh.

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ECONOMICS

IS GURUMURTHY USING VOODOO ECONOMICS TO DEFEND DEMONETIZATION?

Mohan Guruswamy heads the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi, an independent and privately funded think-tank, and is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He argues that S Gurumurthy, the noted RSS ideologue behind Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, is depending on dubious economics to defend demonetization and also attack Dr. Manmohan Singh, as real economics - and facts - tell a different story. respectively. If there ever was a golden decade of India’s economic growth, it was this. By contrast the first two Modi years saw Gross Domestic Product grow by less than those last two Congress years if the 2.2% tweaking of national income accounting is factored in.

he term “voodoo economics” entered popular lexicon when George HW Bush derisively used it to describe his presidential opponent Ronald Reagan’s economic policies for the United States of America in 1980. It is also best suited to describe what the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s principal economic theorist, S Gurumurthy, has been saying recently in defence of his fellow RSS pracharak Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation policy. But before I elaborate on that, given that any criticism of the party in power, or its supporters, is deemed as an expression of support for the Congress regime, particularly the United Progressive Alliance’s 2004-2014 tenure, it is perhaps best to start with where I stand with respect to it.

The golden decade I have never been an admirer of Dr Manmohan Singh for many reasons. Most of all, because he never articulated a vision for a truly liberalised society, where the jackboot imprint of the state would become smaller, with the state relying more on compensation and conditioning and less on coercion to govern and build this nation. Instead, he assumed that by just dismantling the industrial licensing regime, of which he was a strong votary long after the evidence against it had piled up, he was liberalising India. He also did not distinguish between a SEASONAL MAGAZINE

In these last two years there has been zero job growth, though the prime minister claims to have created 31 million new jobs.

Fantasy figures Modi derives this extraordinary conclusion by directly linking it to his claim of having disbursed 3.1 crore Mohan Guruswamy regime that ensured the free ingress and exit of foreign capital into capital markets and a freer regime for foreign long-term investment to cater to India’s rapidly expanding demands. Singh followed the code of Omerta, ignoring all the wrongdoings around him, and showed inertia when his ministers quite openly flouted his directions. But, most of all, I detested his excessive deference to the Congress president, whose sense of right and wrong was largely shaped by her family’s immediate interests. Despite this, I recognise that from 2004 to 2014, the Indian economy grew by an average of over 7.8% each year. Included in this decade were two years at over 10%, two years at over 9%, two at almost 8% and even during the years, when the national mood turned sour, India grew at 4.0% and 5.9%

S Gurumurthy

Mudra loans. What makes this patently bogus is the fact that the average Mudra loan is about Rs 1000 each. If a loan of Rs 1,000 can create one new job, as Modi assumes, then the country will largely rid itself of unemployment by spending just Rs 1 lakh crore to create 100 million new jobs. These are the kind of fantasy economic figures only pracharaks – literally, propagandists – can cook up. That is not all – they don’t only cook up what doesn’t exist, they also ignore the reality pertaining to their main political adversary. In his recent column, Gurumurthy blandly writes that the National Democratic Alliance I government of Atal Behari Vajpayee created 600 lakh jobs during its five years, while the UPA I and II just resulted in 27 lakh jobs. The reality is quite the opposite. According to the Economic Census, “new jobs grew at an annually at 3.2% between 2005 and 2013 (UPA period), faster than the annual pace of job growth of 2.78% between 1998 and 2005 (NDA period).” Employment generation and economic activities grew at their fastest pace in nearly two decades with over 13 crore people employed and 1.92 crore new establishments set up in the country in the eight years leading to 2014. Most of non-agricultural employment is in the “informal sector”. The sub-sectors that account for a dominant share of informal sector employment are manufacturing, construction and trade. It is these sectors that grew fastest in the UPA years when economic growth was the fastest. The growth rate in employment since 2005 was 38.13% and manufacturing was the largest employer followed by retail trade. But I will leave it to the UPA to put forward its case. It has quite a few people in the Rajya Sabha who are qualified to speak on such issues and are yet to earn their pay and repay the trust reposed in them by the Congress. According to Gurumurthy’s voodoo economics, “the well-kept secret” of the Manmohan Singh period’s high economic growth was “huge asset price inflation, not production.” Now, economists track economic growth by measuring the change in the

Dr. Manmohan Singh GDP and then adjusting for inflation. Asset-price inflation refers to the nominal rise in the prices of stocks, bonds, derivatives, real estate and other assets. All standard measurements of inflation, such as the consumer price index, do not account for rising asset prices. GDP does not factor asset price inflation. Real GDP is just a plain and simple sum of all the goods and services produced adjusted for comparison. Paradoxically, it is nominal GDP, not adjusted for inflation, that is the real GDP. These are basic economic principles that Gurumurthy seems to be ignoring. Gurumurthy ascribes high GDP growth to increased money supply. The reality is that a growing economy needs more cash, and India is a cash-driven economy where almost 40% of wages are paid daily by cash. The demonetisation exercise, which has rendered large swathes of the economy sterile leaving behind in its wake huge number of unemployed people, should tell him that now. It’s unfortunate that this realisation must

What makes Modi’s claim patently bogus is the fact that the average Mudra loan is about Rs 1000 each. If a loan of Rs 1,000 can create one new job, as Modi assumes, then the country will largely rid itself of unemployment by spending just Rs 1 lakh crore to create 100 million new jobs.

Arun Jaitley come after shooting oneself in the foot. Gurumurthy would do well to start with reading and digesting Economics, an introductory textbook by the great Paul Samuelson. It is the best selling economics textbook of all time, described as “the canonical textbook of mainstream economic thought.” My advice to him is that what is not in it on economics does not exist – as yet, anyway.

Old technique In early 1999 I had an intellectual encounter with Gurumurthy at an event held at the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, about how to stimulate investment and hence growth. I argued that foreign investment is a key driver of rapid industrial growth, as it was in China, because it invariably brings with it the latest technologies and opens up great export markets. Like Ford, Suzuki and Hyundai now do in India. Gurumurthy argued that ancient India had all of the technologies needed and we need to just draw from them. He said all the capital investment could be achieved by retrieving the gold held in Indian households which, according to him, was worth several trillion dollars. He kept repeating that all those who advocate foreign direct investment and the import of technologies must be foreign agents. I see the same technique of simply maligning the opponents, being employed in defence of demonetisation, not only by Gurumurthy but also by his great friend and fellow 'conspirator', Finance Minister Arun Jaitely. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

INTERVIEW

“AIR TRAVEL SET TO BE A MASS PRODUCT LIKE MOBILE PHONES” Jayant Sinha has been handpicked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to nurture India’s fast growing air travel sector, as the vast country has its own unique challenges in growing this vital transportation mode. If India wants to be a truly developed nation then our aam aadmi need to fly. Towards this, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, has launched the much awaited UDAN scheme which will see the number of airports in the country getting doubled within the next few years. Plans are on to operationalize available airports in various tier-2 and tier-3 cities across the country through a unique bidding process for operating smaller planes. Jayant Sinha understands that to achieve parity with rail in volumes, the air fares need to be competitive with a/c train coaches, but feels that eliminating surge pricing by airlines is not the way forward. Sinha is also on track to develop airports and their efficient use by airlines through the hub-andspoke model, and is also ambitious about introducing voice and Wi-Fi data services on flights. He foresees a future where air travel in India will be as ubiquitous as mobile phone usage. Seasonal Magazine recently met Jayant Sinha for this interview on a wide range of topics: SEASONAL MAGAZINE

INTERVIEW & STORY BY: JAISON D, CARL J & JOHN ANTONY JAYANT SINHA Minister of State for Civil Aviation

ince taking over, you have launched the long pending UDAN project. How will India benefit from this scheme in the long run? Is the plan to double the number of airports, a part of this scheme? Let me give you a few key highlights of the scheme. Right now, we have 75 airports with scheduled services. And there are many airports, around 35 in our estimation, in our Tier-II and TierIII cities that are operational but donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have commercial flight service. So our hope is that by launching UDAN, we can make many of these airports operational, over the next 2 years, and we will double the number of operational airports from 75 to 150. Among the 35 airports I mentioned are Kanpur, Agra, and Gwalior where we need commercial flights operating on schedule. Every year, there would be two schedules - summer and winter schedules. Once an airline commits to a schedule, then you have to fly flights on a regular basis. Therefore, what we would want to do is to get our airlines like Indigo, Spicejet, GoAir, and AirAsia to be able to launch

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commercial services into these underserved airports. How is UDAN going to be funded? Through UDAN, we have come up with a unique market-based mechanism, where we will provide viability-gap funding and subsidies for these airlines to fly into these airports. That fund will be financed through a levy, which we are calling as the regional connectivity fund, which is going to be based on the type of aircraft and the distance that the aircraft flies and the subsidy will be used to subsidize flights to these underserved regions. So the airline has to bid for this fund and we believe this will bring about competitive bidding so that we may not have to get subsidies at all for people to fly to these routes. Along with the subsidy, we have also provided some important benefits. We have lowered their costs dramatically. We have reduced the taxes on the aviation turbine fuel to only about 3%. We have waived off all airport and navigation charges for these flights. In addition to that, we have been able to lower the costs of operating in these airports by having the local bodies and state governments extending support. What will be the main attraction for the various airlines to be a part of UDAN? Along with the cost-reduction measures, we have decided to give exclusivity to these routes for up to 3 years. So if you get the Gwalior-Delhi route, you win it by bidding for it, then you get the route exclusively for 3 years. But you have to stick to a certain price cap. So, half the seats have to be at a certain price cap or lower. This has been done so that at different flying distances, there is a different price cap. What this entails is that for a one hour flight, it shouldn’t’ cost more than 2500 rupees. Half the seats are capped in terms of price because you are getting the benefits and half the seats can be at market price. So in a nutshell, the airline is bidding for a specific route and you are bidding a certain subsidy level for 50% of the seats. Suppose you are flying a 72-seater, you are bidding for a subsidy on 36 of those seats. This we think will jumpstart the regional aviation market into Tier-II and Tier-III cities and will add many more SEASONAL MAGAZINE

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The price cap is such that it makes travelling by air very competitive compared to other modes of transportation. Obviously when you fly by plane, you get many conveniences like comfort and time saving.

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travelers to our overall market. That is what the UDAN scheme will do: “Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik.” You have mooted a plan to use the smaller airstrips lying unused in states like Tamilnadu for the use of smaller aircraft. Most of these are, however, in tier-2 or tier-3 cities where people travel more by rail or road. Do you think airlines will bid for these strips to fly 9seater or 18-seater planes? The answer is yes. The price cap is such that it makes travelling by air very competitive compared to other modes of transportation. Obviously when you

fly by plane, you get many conveniences like comfort and time saving. So even if the prices are marginally higher, we believe that taking the time factor into consideration, the value proposition of flying is high. Do you think that a mere bidding system will transform the aviation sector in the terms you elucidated or is there a need to provision some money to ensure that the services sustain for a longer period of time? See, it is very simple. Suppose an airline wins a route, let us say it is the route from Bikaner to Jaipur where they bid very low for it that is a zero-subsidy level and they get it exclusively for 3 years under an agreement that they would fly 7 flights a week. But, then we find out that they do just 3 flights a week, then in 6 months we can take the route away from them and re-bid the routes. Those who are not able to mount the service, will have to give up the route. What may happen is that, let us say, somebody bids for 40 seats, since they have to bid for seats also and if the 40 seats are not competitive, they will drop out and the 9-seater bidder will come in and be given flying rights to these routes. While domestic air travel has improved to 9 crore passengers, just the airconditioned coaches in trains carry 13 crore people, and this is set to rise as the common man is increasingly using a/c coaches in trains. When do you think Indian air sector will achieve real parity with rail? “Rail parity” is a term that I coined. As I’ve said, you have to look at it in terms of fares. So, today a/c coaches vs air fares are about the same. You can also look at it in terms of segment of travelers: you had cited only domestic travelers but if you are to include domestic plus international travelers, then the figure nears 14 crore. But you have to account for the fact that domestic traffic is growing at 20% a year right now. Even if it were just 10%, and rail AC coach traffic will be pegged at 13 crore a year, then in a few years time, there is no reason why air traffic wont can’t catch up. Every indication that we have now says that air traffic is set to grow 10-15% a year for many many years. The idea is

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I find the airlines to be very considerate for passengers with special needs. There are also aisle seats and in the emergency aisle which they set aside for people with these needs. As long as passengers plan such requirements and communicate it to the airlines, it is always possible to call these things out.

” that flying will be available to everyone and it will be affordable and not an elitist service. There was a time when mobile phones were considered to be an elitist asset but it is increasingly becoming a mass product. This is how I would locate the tremendous potential of air travel. It is becoming increasingly conspicuous over the years: an air traveler who used to fly just once in 2-3 years now fly 2-3 times a years because of the affordability. You cited the management of a regional connectivity fund for the UDAN scheme. Let us say even after a successful bid of a route, there could still be a failure on the operator’s part. So do you see merit in the government chipping in whenever an airline fails to meet the requirements just so that the entire process does not get derailed? Of course, we are totally committed to its success. We believe that the funding of 500 crores is sufficient for the UDAN scheme. If there is competitive bidding and we find a lot of people coming for air services for different routes, then we will see how other alternative modes of funding will take shape. For the moment, let’s see how the bid works. Why is the ministry still allowing

variable pricing or surge pricing on airlines in a country like India which has been struggling to make the common man fly? Often it is the common man who has to book tickets in an emergency at the last moment, and he is the one hit by this surge pricing.. We have looked at the question of pricing very carefully. We have found that the final bucket of tickets left in a situation of emergency booking is a very small percentage of the total number of tickets sold. Only 1-2% of the tickets comprise the higher fare bucket whereas the vast majority of them are sold at the lower fare buckets. In aggregate, the fare pricing is coming down sharply over the years. Overall people are getting much cheaper tickets and as long as people plan sufficiently in advance, they will get much cheaper tickets. Yes, like in any other deregulated, open and competitive sector, when you pay at the last moment you may have to shell out more. We have found empirically that the number of seats sold at the highest price point is very low. But, there are exceptional situations, when for example the Kashmir crisis happened and people found it tough to travel to Kashmir and during the Jat agitation, we relaxed the fares so that people weren’t burdened during an emergency. But, people have to understand that there are busy periods of the year when prices do go up and because of that it is better to plan ahead of time. So we want to encourage that behavior as well. Why are the airlines reluctant to make the booking process across various pricing-buckets transparent? And why has been the government not pushing them hard enough? What we have found out from the airlines is that their competitiveness and strategies takes a hit if they make their number of seats transparent. If they make it obvious as to what they are going to do, then it would difficult for them to compete. But, we are definitely looking into the matter. You have proposed to introduce voice and data / WiFi services in Indian flights. What are the chief impediments to this proposal, and when can India SEASONAL MAGAZINE

see this becoming a reality? This matter is under consideration and we are awaiting Department of Telecommunications to study this thoroughly and get back to us soon. We are also waiting to hear from the airlines if they are fully in favor of this idea or not. It’s certainly possible so we are just buying time to understand the whole feasibility of it. Since airports and airlines are known to develop synergistically along a huband-spoke model, are there plans to develop larger airports that can act as highly efficient hubs? Yes, we would also like the airlines to add more services and use the hub-andspoke approach. Certainly, Air India is already doing this and Delhi is a hub airport. Mumbai has traditionally been a hub airport for Air India and Jet Airways. We are sure that over a period of time, more airports will serve as hubs both from a regional perspective – like how Guwahati is the regional hub for the North East - and from an international

“ The Finance

Minister has said this would create a new normal for India. In the new economy, we would really have compressed the parallel black economy, much better tax compliance, less reliance on cash to prevent another black money scenario, lot more digital payments and transactions and much more convenience for consumers provided the behavior change happens.

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perspective – like how Delhi is right now. On the personal front, you and your wife were buzzing in social media for giving up your spacious first-class seats for helping an ailing passenger. Do you think the airlines need to have more number of spacious seats for the comfort of such sick passengers? I find the airlines to be very considerate for passengers with special needs. There are also aisle seats and in the emergency aisle which they set aside for people with these needs. As long as passengers plan such requirements and communicate it to the airlines, it is always possible to call these things out. All of us, like how I decided to forego my seat, will continue to show our empathy to such passengers. A couple of questions on the demonetization move of the government. Leaving aside the question of whether the move actually targets black money or not, some commentators strongly believe that this

future government can repeat the move?

has the potential to transform India in a way not seen since 1991. If the next few moves are played right, could India be in the midst of the largest wealth redistribution program in history? This is a profound transformation of the Indian economy. Our honorable Prime Minister has said that we are trying to set India on a new path. The Finance Minister has said this would create a new normal for India. In the new economy, we would really have compressed the parallel black economy, much better tax compliance, less reliance on cash to prevent another black money scenario, lot more digital payments and transactions and much more convenience for consumers provided the behavior change happens. This will also result in lower cost for the financial system, which is otherwise very expensive. This will help us see through a far better economic trajectory, but decades into the future. The big structural change that has happened, very much like the 1991 reforms, will enable us to increase our growth rate and the compounding effect of the high growth rate will be extraordinary. Before

1991, our economy used to grow at an average of 4-5% every year but now it grows at 6-7%. So, yes we are far betteroff since having made that structural change in 1991. This is precisely what we should expect in the coming years after this move. Do you think it was necessary that the confidence in cash had to be irrevocably shaken – now that any

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This is a profound transformation of the Indian economy. Our honorable Prime Minister has said that we are trying to set India on a new path.

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No, not exactly. Confidence in cash has not been shaken at all. In fact, I would view this as an exceedingly important confidence booster to those who would operate within the legal system and pay their taxes. We have made it amply clear that those who operate in an illegal parallel economy will have to face severe action. This is where I think former PM Dr Manmohan Singh was wrong in his reading of the situation. Firstly, he was wrong in economic terms when he claimed that there would be a 2% reduction in GDP. You can’t view this purely in economic terms though. There are in fact two aspects which may be economic at some level but are outside the realm of economics if it was analyzed objectively. Firstly, we have send a strong signal to those outside the legal system that they have no place to hide. We have done this through a slew of measures like the Foreign Black Money Act, Domestic Black Money Act, Benami Transaction Act etc. We have conclusively shown that any violation can entail legal action. Secondly, we have shown that we have a strong state and not a weak state. That is if you carry out any illegal activity outside the legal economy, then you are on the verge of facing punitive action. Well, this is certainly an initiative that is one of its kind in India’s economic history. But what about the reforms like electoral funding.. Well, the PM has categorically stated that a consensus should emerge and we can certainly look into it. As far as election financing is concerned, let us have a debate. We want to do this one step at a time. This is also linked to whether we should have assembly and union elections simultaneously and introduce public financing of elections. Whatever the issues or constraints are, let us see what we can do. Ultimately, it is about arriving at a national consensus. The people wanted that we crackdown on corruption and black money. The psychological message that we send through such measures is being grossly underestimated. These are noneconomic, intangible in nature, which to our mind is very important. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

NEWS IN BRIEF I CAN'T AFFORD IT: VAANI ON PLASTIC SURGERY RUMOURS Actress Vaani Kapoor, while denying reports of getting plastic surgery done on her chin, said, "I can't afford surgery, I am only onefilm old." She further said, "I have lost weight; my face is bound to look different. We shot in Paris when it was freezing; the cameras keep zooming in and out. The face looks different from different angles."

UK WILL HAVE 18 MONTHS TO NEGOTIATE BREXIT: EU NEGOTIATOR The UK will have less than 18 months to negotiate its departure from the European Union after invoking Article 50, which triggers the formal EU exit procedure, chief Brexit negotiator for EU, Michel Barnier has said. Barnier further said that "cherry-picking is not an option" for the UK during the negotiations as "time will be very short".

I SUFFER FROM A MENTAL ILLNESS: LADY GAGA

GERMAN CHANCELLOR MERKEL CALLS FOR BAN ON BURQA

Singer Lady Gaga has revealed that she suffers from a mental illness. Gaga admitted that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), while interacting with youngsters at the Ali Forney Center in Harlem, New York, a shelter for homeless LGBTQ youth. She added, "I struggle with that illness every day. So, I need my mantra to help keep me relaxed."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for a ban on burqas and said she will protect Germany against future refugee waves while seeking support for her bid for a fourth term as Chancellor. Earlier, Merkel had opposed such a ban citing constitutional obstacles. Notably, Merkel's approval ratings had fallen from 96.7% two years ago to 47% in July 2016.

DELHI POLICE MAY START WORKING IN 8-HOUR SHIFTS SOON Delhi police is likely to start working on an eight-hour shift system like their Mumbai counterparts soon. DCP Rajeev Ranjan visited Mumbai last week to study the shift pattern and has circulated a report seeking suggestions. In Mumbai, the police personnel work in two shifts but in Delhi, they have a 24X7 job without breaks or rest, reports said. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

IN-FOCUS SEASONAL MAGAZINE RECENTLY MET CHAIRMAN & MANAGING DIRECTOR OF COCHIN SHIPYARD LTD, MADHU S NAIR, AT HIS OFFICE IN CSL CAMPUS, KOCHI, FOR THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW.

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COCHIN SHIPYARD LTD

defeat those who fight against me,” says hymn 1.8.3 of Rig Veda as well as INS Vikrant’s motto. On delivery, the 40000 tonne Vikrant will open the doors for India to join an elite technology club in defence. The country’s first indigenous Aircraft Carrier, Vikrant, is at phase-II of construction. There are only 37 active aircraft carriers in the world. Of course, that is not a very meaningful number, as 10 among them belong to a single nation - USA. That leaves only 27 in rest of the world. There are only 12 other nations in the globe possessing aircraft carriers. What is more, just four countries have ever been able to build an aircraft carrier on their own - USA, UK, France, & Russia. Vikrant has been launched into the waters in 2013, from Cochin Shipyard, where this 262 metre long monster was built. It is now waiting for final fitments at the shipyard, before going for sea trials and commissioning. Seasonal Magazine’s team was recently in this shipyard, meeting with its Chairman & Managing Director. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

postgraduate naval architect from Japan’s Osaka University, which is incidentally topranked for this niche subject, Madhu S Nair currently heads a nearly 2000-people strong team of ship designers, engineers, builders, managers, and support staff at Cochin Shipyard Ltd (CSL). A Category 1 Miniratna PSU under Ministry of Shipping, Government of India, the campus of the shipyard at Kochi, Kerala, will come across as generous at 170 acres. Getting into the campus is a bit of a hassle, thanks to the CISF manned security outpost, and it was so for us despite the reception being intimated by CMD’s office of our visit. But it should be so, we guess, as at stake here is the security of one of the largest greenfield ship building yards in India, and the invaluable assets it creates like the INS Vikrant. But once civilian staff of CSL took over our reception, everything went smooth right up to the CMD’s office. Madhu S Nair, CMD, has been a shipyard veteran for the past 28 years, and guided us towards the core business and expansion plans of the shipyard. While Cochin Shipyard Ltd has been steadily posting good financial results in recent years, Madhu Nair doesn’t hide the fact that not

everything is gung-ho with the shipping industry, and in turn with CSL. Indeed, the world shipping industry has been battered out of shape in recent years post the 2008 financial meltdown, and the final straw was the rout in crude prices, which took away the appetite for even oil & gas vessels. Still, Cochin Shipyard Ltd has been able to achieve 17% growth in profits in financial year 2015-16. In fact, CSL has been a consistently profit-making shipyard in India. The secret behind this performance is that instead of cribbing about lost opportunities elsewhere, the CSL team has adapted itself to serve new opportunities that have emerged inside the country, thanks to the thrust on Make-in-India program and another one to indigenize defence equipment manufacture. Cochin Shipyard Ltd, which has exported around 50 ships worldwide, is also re-strategizing itself to address new emerging opportunities in European Union and elsewhere. Madhu Nair also informs that the shipyard is utilizing the current lull in international market to overhaul its systems and train its workmen in newer technologies to get ready for the next cyclical upturn in international shipping. The fact that CSL has performed well in even adverse market conditions bodes

well for this strategy. For instance, during the past ten fiscals, CSL’s revenue has risen by over 5 times from Rs. 374 crores to Rs. 1995 crores now, and its net profit has soared by over 15 times from Rs. 18 crores to Rs. 275 crores now. While CSL’s performance is excellent by Indian standards, those exposed to shipbuilding momentum in, say, a country like Korea or Japan, might remain unimpressed. For instance, at the world’s largest shipyard at Ulsan, Korea, run by Hyundai Heavy Industries, a typical new ship (costing $80 million or around Rs. 550 crore) is launched into water every four days! Compare it with India where it takes much longer to build large ships. We posed this seemingly damning question to Madhu Nair, and his comprehensive reply speaks enough about the maturities and capabilities that have been built into Cochin Shipyard Ltd over the past 45 years of its existence. He is most bullish about Kochi turning into a maritime hub, and CSL is doing more than its part, by doing some heavy lifting for this objective, by undertaking to a build a larger third dry dock, and a new international ship repair facility, both to be part-funded by proceeds from its IPO, and the rest coming from CSL’s cash reserves. Indeed, it speaks of courage in these troubled times for shipping, just like how the aircraft carrier CSL built has been named ‘Vikrant’ by Indian Navy, meaning ‘courageous’ in Sanskrit. A naval architect by training, Madhu Nair is also a seasoned leader in marketing, and it shows in his indepth knowledge of the European and Asian markets for ship building and ship repair. Before taking over as CMD, he was Chief General Manager (Business Development), at CSL.

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Seasonal Magazine interviews Madhu S Nair, Chairman & Managing Director, Cochin Shipyard Ltd. Your FY’16 net profit is up by 17%. To what do you attribute this performance, do you see this bettering in the next few years, even if sales growth remains in high single digits? Yes, we have had a decent increase in net profit, even though the topline growth was only 7-8%. What according to you is the most important strength of CSL? CSL has an excellent relationship with trade unions. You will be surprised to know that there has not been a single day of strike during the past thirty years by CSL’s own workers. This must be a record, especially given the perception about Kerala in this regard. So, let me put the record straight – we have the best workers here. To what do you attribute this recent better performance? It is basically the product-mix which we have now, as well as tightening of internal controls. As you know, this is a bad market for shipping industry and in a bad market you need to squeeze out the last drop to get your results. What would be your product range in this business? Our bread n’ butter business segments are ship building and ship repair. In each of these segments we cater to two sectors – commercial and defence. So, we have commercial ship building and defence ship building, and commercial ship repairs and defence or naval ship repairs. In ship building what would be the product range? We can build practically any kind of vessel. But it also depends on what kind of vessels the market needs now. Over the past 10 years, we have been more focused on vessels for the oil & gas sector, but suddenly oil is down, and we are not expecting an upside from that sector, soon. For operations like Cochin Shipyard, where the sizes of the

individual orders are huge but the number of orders is few, consistency in performance is a challenge. How do you plan to address this as a listed company? Instead of going for any specific kind of performance numbers, what we essentially do is irrespective of whether we are a listed company or a non-listed company, we always try to optimize our resources both in terms of our facilities as well as our human resources. We always try to push forward at the maximum of our capabilities. How we do that is by building up a strong order book position, by delivering the maximum within deadlines, and by continually refilling the order book. One good development is the Make-in-India program which is driving the Indian market. Defence has also become a good spot. What would be your current order book size? Including our naval and commercial works, our order book should be close to Rs. 4500 crore now. Have you identified any specific product that can be manufactured in more numbers? No, it doesn’t work that way in this industry. At the end of the day, we supply to a much bigger industry, which is shipping, and each shipping company is always trying to beat its competition by having more capabilities and customizations in its vessels. Each time they order a ship, they want something different. So our challenge as a ship builder would be to live up to that demand for agility.

Cochin Shipyard is at such an age that we need to invest for the future.

What about the cruise segment? We are not in the cruise segment currently, but there is a new segment coming up, which is the ferry. Ferry is the European term for passenger ships. We have been contracted for making four ferries for the Andaman. Two of them will have passenger capacity of 1200 and two are of 500 capacity. While we will do the design side, some strong European companies are also partnering with us in this contract. Once these vessels come into the market, industry is sure to notice the quality. Around 90% of the world ferry market is in Europe, with the rest scattered elsewhere. And we are opening up the ferry market for Cochin Shipyard with this contract. So to answer your question, while we may not be looking at a specific product, we are definitely looking at specific segments like ferries. Can you share us the approximate split in revenue between your domestic and overseas businesses? That varies very much from year to year, and as I said earlier, since the overseas market is down for some time now, the Indian business forms the majority. On the ship repair side, we have traditionally been domestic oriented. There is enough to tap in India. On the ship building side, we used to be 50:50, but as of now the only overseas order has, in fact, sailed off today, leaving us with almost 100% domestic ship building orders hereafter. Of course, within the domestic business, we have the commercial and defence segments. But on a long-term basis, say for the last 10 years, what would be the split in revenue between domestic and overseas businesses? Well, it used to be fifty-fifty if you take such a longer time-frame. We have exported more than 50 ships. We were doing strong in the oil & gas sector, but then this downturn happened. We are still strong in this segment and highly SEASONAL MAGAZINE

accepted by the oil & gas industry. Also, the share of your Indian government and non-government businesses? Indian order book, on the ship building side, is dominated by government orders. This is because Indian shipping industry too has been going through a bad patch. Shipping companies just donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have that appetite to place new orders. On the ship repair side too we used to have non-government orders earlier. We were also building for firms like Shipping Corporation of India, which is a PSU. Which among your four broad segments is the fastest growing? The fastest growing segment for Cochin Shipyard is ship repairs on the defence or naval side. What would be the approximate size of the ship repair industry in India? Well, there are various figures floating around. I would say that the size of the repair industry annually is around Rs. 2500 crore. This figure is really the potential business of getting Indian ships repaired in India and abroad. The actual ship repairing work being undertaken by Indian shipyards now would be between Rs. 700 to Rs. 900 crores annually. So, there is good opportunity for CSL in this business. Recently the Union Cabinet cleared a nearly Rs. 1800 crore proposal to expand Cochin Shipyard by building a dry dock. Can you explain the benefits from this project? Cochin Shipyard has been in existence for around 45 years now. We have two dry docks that are large as well as efficient. But sizes of ships internationally have gone bigger. Our largest dry dock is not able to accommodate such larger ships like new Suezmax and new Aframax vessels, or an LNG vessel. We also had the business of repairing jack-up rigs. We had done about 50 such projects, but today jack-up rig owners prefer to dry dock their vessels which canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be done here. Today we are missing out SEASONAL MAGAZINE

on all these segments. So we feel that a larger dry dock will open up segments like LNG vessels, new Suezmax / Aframax vessels, jack-up rigs, submersible repairs etc. It is a dock that will be 310 metre long, and it is a step dock with 75 by 60 metre.

efforts. Another major project that CSL has been executing is the International Ship Repair Facility (ISRF). When will this be commissioned and how will this facilitate the company to grow the repairing business?

This will be an entirely new dock?

Cochin Shipyard has the best ship repairing facility in the country. This is centered around our current 275 metre long dock. With optimizations and better efficiencies we may be able to do a bit better, but we think that we are nearing a saturation point with this dock. So, we need a new ship repair facility to scale up. Currently we handle between 70 to 100 ships coming in for repair each year. Among them many are sub 130 metre vessels like the offshore vessels, naval vessels, coast guard vessels, fishing vessels etc. The new dock will exclusively cater to these small and medium ships, while the existing repair dock will be dovetailed for the larger vessels. The ISRF will have its own berthing spaces, six workstations on a ship-lift, and every modern facility. Another important factor is that we want to position Kochi as a ship repair hub with this new facility. When the volumes are built up, the supporting ecosystem should be here. Today, when a ship owner considers Kochi there are concerns like whether his vessel will get a slot, whether there will be capable

Yes, it will be an entirely new dry dock. Modifications are not very feasible. We already have two docks, and this will be our third dock to come up. It can handle around 40% bigger ships than currently possible. It is understood that this project is to be fully funded by CSL itself. What percentage of your cash reserves would go in for this development? We are doing two major projects simultaneously as I told earlier, this new dry dock and the international ship repair facility. Together they will consume around 60% of our cash reserves. These are most important projects for us, as Cochin Shipyard is at such an age that we need to invest for the future. Do you have enough human capital to address all these expansions? We do have expertise and scalability, but this is an ongoing process, and we are investing and focusing heavily on our training and skill development programs. Because, to build up workers in this business, it will take time and

contractors etc. That makes ship owners to go for Singapore or Dubai, and we want to attract this business by making Kochi a viable hub. For making the new aircraft carrier for Indian Navy, was there any foreign collaboration? IAC-1 or INS Vikrant, the first indigenously built aircraft carrier in India has a design that is fully by the Indian Navy. It is also fully built in India by Cochin Shipyard. However, for some components and systems both Navy and Cochin Shipyard did have some technical collaboration with overseas companies. Countries like Korea have built massive expertise in delivering large ships in a rapid timeframe, and do you think CSL would benefit from a technology transfer from such countries through the partnership/ investment route? Because, we hear these stories about how Hyundai, Daewoo, Samsung and the like complete ships in days rather than months or years… The scale and ecosystem with which CSL and Korean shipyards are operating are totally different. A ship builder there would have a whole supporting township around it. Imagine Kochi being Cochin Shipyard’s – something like that. We can’t compare these two models at all, as everything will be a challenge – the level of investment required, the scalability, the massive order book required, practically everything. They operate on 75% automation. They too were small operations, but then Korea too grew at an astounding pace, and these ship builders there grew with their country. But then, such a model may not be suitable for India too. One reason is that the level of risk involved is also high. When the orders for new ships slow down, the effects won’t be just industrywide but country-shaking. That is why today the Korean ship building industries are facing one of their worst crises, and are being funded by a $50 billion debt program. New ship building orders are down more than 90% for these companies. This can

happen because a company like Hanjin Shipping which is Korea’s largest and a top-10 shipping company in the world, has recently filed for bankruptcy. Same is the case with Chinese ship building now.

made us lose significantly on our European business. But we are now in the process of rebuilding the EU business by leveraging our good reputation there, into other sectors. Also, instead of looking for short-term gains, we are planning for the long-term in sectors that will be sustainable.

Since INS Viraat was here for the decommissioning refit recently, can you explain us what this entails, and whether this is a prospective business for CSL from overseas? In the case of INS Viraat, we have been maintaining her for the past 25 years. The Navy has decided to decommission her, and prior to that we do this refit where we remove some critical underwater equipment, and ensure that nothing goes wrong with many systems, like oil leak or pilferage. It is like before abandoning or dismantling a house, we would remove the valuables, disconnect the main switchboard or water connection, that kind of work. After being towed back to Mumbai, it will be up to the Navy what they do with her.

CSL has an education wing and given India’s maritime potential, do you have plans to grow this initiative? Yes, that is one area where we are very bullish about. We are investing strongly into skill development. Our training school, at any given time, is training close to 1000 people on various courses. For the last 25 years we have been running the Marine Engineering Training Institute, and now we are building a new campus at our land in Girinagar, Ernakulam, at an investment of Rs. 30 crore. We are motivated to go big in training as this industry is only about technology and people.

Europe is one geography from where CSL is getting significant business. Do you have major plans to grow this and/or to identify more such promising sources?

Can you tell us some aspects that you learned and got trained in Japan? According to you, what should India do to exploit its maritime potential?

Cochin Shipyard’s products and services are well-accepted in Europe, especially in Scandinavia and Western Europe. But as I told earlier, oil & gas was our major sector, and that was so even in Europe, and oil’s steep fall

As a manufacturing company we are proud of being part of programmes like Make in India. We need to have a long term vision. Just look at Maruti, their long-term vision to emerge as a leader in India, and how it has worked out

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Can you tell us something about your education, training, and background?

beautifully. Coming to lessons from Japan, the prime lesson is to value your time. Start inculcating the value of time from childhood. When you promise something on time, deliver that on time. Schedules are sacrosanct. When schedules slip, companies slip, economies slip, and nation slips. There are around five major ship builders under the public sector, and around an equal number of private players in India. Where is CSL placed among these competitors? We are the only major shipbuilder under Ministry of Shipping. All other major PSU shipbuilders come under Ministry of Defence. In the private sector, there are around 5 to 7 major shipbuilders including new projects that have come up in later years. Some of the private players are today facing difficulties due to the downturn in the shipping sector. By business size or revenue, we are the second largest shipyard in India, next only to Mazagon Dock which comes under Ministry of Defence. How do you assess the future prospects for shipbuilding in India, and for CSL in particular? There have been many positive developments like new favourable government policies, the infrastructure status given to this industry, ship SEASONAL MAGAZINE

building support scheme etc. The prospects for this industry are also dependent on Indian ship owners remaining invested in India. Government’s focus on shipbuilding is perfect for another reason too, which is the potential for employment. As far as CSL is concerned, we are looking forward to Kochi emerging as a maritime as well as economic hub with crucial projects like the Vallarpadam Transshipment Terminal, Kochi Metro, BPCL expansion, LNG Terminal getting fully functional, the port turning to a cruise hub etc. With such overall progress in Kochi, the future looks brighter for CSL.

Of our two two large expansion plans, first is building up a large new dry dock for Rs. 1800 crores, and then there is an integrated international ship repair facility where we will be spending close to Rs. 1000 crore.

I did my primary schooling in Mumbai, then shifted to Kochi with my highschooling in St. Albert’s. I did my predegree in Maharaja’s College, and then had my BTech in Naval Architecture from CUSAT. I got campus placement to Cochin Shipyard in 1988, and after 9 years of working here, took a break and did my Masters in Engineering with specialization in Naval Architecture from University of Osaka, Japan. Then I returned to CSL rather than stay back in Japan as some of my friends thought back then. I also did some specialized courses in ship designing from Japan. So, basically I am a naval architect, and I am also a member of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects. Do you think you succeeded to a high degree due to specializing in a niche? Not really. My philosophy is that everyone should try to do their best in whatever space they are, and everything else would follow. Any major trends that you envisage as being a game changer for the ship building industry in the coming years? Well, there are many such trends that might catch up. Coastal transportation using ferries is one such area. If such systems come in India, you can travel from, say, Kochi to Mumbai in around 36 hours, enjoying the best of a sea voyage, yet at very reasonable cost. There are these roll-on / roll-off or ROPAX vessels in Europe, where we can even drive in our car or SUV, use the same for local travel at our destination city, and come back in that ferry the same way. ROPAX vessels are also intended for cargo like transporting new cars etc and this has recently started in India. With our long coastline and major cities along it, the potential for both passenger and cargo are immense. Also, when a port develops, demand for inland transportation grows, and the government has also been betting big on growing inland water transportation which holds immense promise in a country like India.

REVOLUTION

IS AADHAR GOING TO SPUR INDIA INC? THE GOVERNMENT’S PURPOSE IN SETTING IT UP IN 2009 WAS TO HELP THE STATE CORRECTLY DIRECT WELFARE PAYMENTS TO THOSE ENTITLED TO THEM, BY CIRCUMVENTING THE PILFERAGE-MINDED MIDDLEMEN . SINCE THEN, THE SCHEME HAS SEEN SUCCESSES AND FLOPS IN EQUAL VEIN - BUT BUSINESSES IN INDIA, LIKE RELIANCE JIO, HAVE LEVERAGED IT TO THEIR ADVANTAGE AND THE TREND IS ONLY GOING TO CONTINUE. THERE are two ways to sign up to Jio, a new and irresistibly priced mobiletelephony service which Mukesh Ambani, the boss of Reliance Industries, a conglomerate, launched in September 2016 and which is luring tens of millions of new customers each month. One way requires a wad of documents, multiple signatures and plenty of patience, since Jio takes days or weeks to go through “know-your-customer” procedures. The second way is magically simple: the person rests a finger on an inch-wide scanner, and if the print matches the identity the customer is claiming, Jio downloads the information it needs from the Indian authorities and activates the phone line within minutes. Jio is tapping a database called Aadhaar, after the Hindi word for “foundation”. It is a cloud-based ID system that holds the details of over a billion Indians. By early 2017 all Indian adults should have provided their fingerprints, iris scans, name, birth date, address and gender in return for a single, crucial, 12-digit number. In the public sphere Aadhaar helps to distribute subsidies worth about $40bn a year. Around 300m biometric entries are linked to citizens’ bank accounts, so that money can be paid to them direct. Billions of rupees used to be lost each year through “leakage” of benefits—a euphemism for fraud in India’s often corrupt bureaucracy. Aadhaar has already saved perhaps $5bn, says the government. But the system was designed with more than just the needs of the state in mind. The team of techies behind the project, led by Nandan Nilekani, a founder of SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Infosys, a champion of Indian IT, from the outset understood the importance of making Aadhaar available to all who might be able to use it, not just official departments. Aadhaar is open-access and can be used by third parties free of charge. By now, fingerprint readers are a common sight in phone shops, insurance offices, banks and other sellers of regulated products. Some firms, such as Jio, will use Aadhaar to save huge amounts of time for their customers-not to mention a small forest’s worth of paper. The architects of Aadhaar reckon that is just the beginning. On the top of it, India is building a complex public digital infrastructure, called “India Stack”: a series of connected systems that allow people to store and share their data. These could include bank statements, medical records, birth certificates or tax filings. When connected up to a new payments system called the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the potential is huge. Already, businesses ranging from Bangalore startups to international banks operating in India are looking to build new businesses on the capabilities of Aadhaar and the coming India Stack. Venture-capital firms are funding

On the top of it, India is building a complex public digital infrastructure, called “India Stack”: a series of connected systems that allow people to store and share their data. These could include bank statements, medical records, birth certificates or tax filings.

hackathons to encourage software developers to come up with new ways to use the technology. Any firm can “ping” Aadhaar to see, for example, if a job applicant is who he claims to be. One Bangalore startup, Babajob, does this for the service staff it connects to employers. It can instantly verify if a potential employee’s name and age matches that attached to the phone number he is calling from, that is in the Aadhaar database (or he must supply a code number received by text). It can be done remotely, an advance over cardbased ID schemes. A similar, more secure check, using iris scans or fingerprints, can be done with mobile phones or tablets with Aadhaarcompatible iris scanners (at under $200). This is no small feat: merely establishing someone’s identity is grit in the wheels of commerce. A typical firm in India spends some 1,500 rupees ($22) obtaining and validating client data, be it to bring a taxi driver onto a ride-hailing platform or to accept a new mutual-fund customer. Bringing down the cost can vastly expand a firm’s target market. If a lending outfit, for example, can afford to spend only 0.5% of the value of a loan on such tasks, its smallest credit will be 300,000 rupees, an amount which will limit it to the richest 15m Indians, says Sahil Kini of Aspada, a venturecapital firm. Reduce the validation cost to 10 rupees—the figure many in Aadhaar circles use—and you can viably lend to over 500m people. The benefits of cheap, secure ID could go further. Mr Nilekani argues that verifying identity, and in turn reputation, is ever more important in business:

consider star-rating systems devised by firms such as eBay, an auction giant, or Uber, a ride-hailing firm. Web users now often establish their identity using logins for Facebook, Google or WeChat to access third-party services such as newspaper websites. But none can claim to rest on a person’s real, verified legal identity in the way Aadhaar-accessed services can.

It all stacks up For now, the Aadhaar system is used chiefly to confirm identity (which has been done 3bn times since 2010) and to share know-your-customer information such as someone’s address (300m times in the past year). But since any information can be linked to a sort of digital “locker” tied to each Aadhaar ID, there are more possibilities. A file of past digital interactions—a sort of eBay star system accumulated over different services—could also be attached. This would most obviously be useful in financial services, particularly among those who have little or no access to them now. A potential borrower could allow a lender to have access to anything linked to his Aadhaar number: his bank statement, utility-bill payments, lifeinsurance policy, university diplomas and much else besides. “It increases

trust,” says Mr Nilekani. “You can combine proven legal identity with lots of data. You become trustable.” Sean Blagsvedt, the founder of Babajob, compares India Stack to the advent of the social-security number system in America, which paved the way for credit bureaus, credit cards, mail-order services and, later on, e-commerce. The economic consequences are sizeable. Instead of borrowing against assets, as is currently the norm in India, people could borrow against projected cashflows proven by past tax returns, for example. Better yet, “digitally driven” credit would shift people into the formal economy and away from the informal realm where nine in ten Indians currently work. Another element of India Stack, the UPI, a payments system, was launched in August. Under pressure from regulators, banks have agreed to let their customers send or receive money not just through their banks’ apps but through third-party ones as well. A client of State Bank of India, for example, can just as easily make payments from his account through PhonePe, a subsidiary of Flipkart, an e-commerce website, or any other of about two dozen UPI-based apps. Mr Nilekani speaks of a “WhatsApp moment” for Indian

banking, in which newcomers usurp sleepy banking incumbents, much as the American messaging app deprived telecoms operators of revenues from text messages. Techno-optimism always warrants some caution. Just because Aadhaar has succeeded in slashing subsidies fraud does not mean the products built atop it will catch on. The UPI apps received a one-off boost from the government’s push forcibly to “demonetise” the economy (it cancelled banknotes representing 86% of all cash on November 8th), but other, private PayPal-like services did much better. Still, other public technologies have prompted big leaps when opened to private enterprise. Once available to the general public from 2000, the GPS location system (previously reserved for the American military that developed it) did more than merely disrupt mapmaking firms. In time, GPS spawned Google Maps, which in turn facilitated Uber. Backers of Aadhaar argue that no one can imagine what will be built around the platform in years to come any more than the internet’s pioneers three decades ago could foresee social media or bitcoin, a digital currency. Privacy campaigners worry that it has Orwellian overtones. In theory it remains voluntary to enroll in Aadhaar. In practice it is compulsory, since it is becoming the only way to gain access to important social services. Wary of relying on a state-backed scheme, American tech giants have treated it cautiously. Google has expressed enthusiasm for its potential, but it and Apple have yet to agree to install Aadhaar-compatible scanners on their phones. For India’s citizens, who can use Aadhaar and India Stack to mobilise their data for their own benefit, the advantages are clearer, starting with access to cheaper credit. Some of the system’s teething problems—one hurdle has been that the hands of many manual labourers are so worn that Aadhaar cannot register their fingerprints—show just what an advance the technology could be. Indian businesses will have the chance to serve and make sense of legions of new customers. Like the scanners it utilises, the scheme’s potential is not hard to put your finger on. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

AMAZON PROMOTES A GRAB-AND-GO EXPERIENCE THERE IS ALMOST NO ASPECT OF RETAIL THAT AMAZON HAS NOT UPENDED WITH ONLINE SHOPPING. NOW, THE COMPANY IS TRYING TO COMPUTERISE THE EXPERIENCE OF BUYING SANDWICHES AND SODA FROM THE CORNER CONVENIENCE STORE. n the latest in its expanding set of experiments involving bricksand-mortar retail stores, Amazon has created a small grocery store in Seattle that will allow customers to pluck drinks, prepared meals and other items off shelves and walk out without having to wait in a checkout line, the company said. Amazon said on its website that a smartphone app and various other types of technology in the store had eliminated the usual bottleneck of cashiers and registers that typically stand between shoppers and the store exit. For now, only Amazon employees can shop in the 1,800-square-foot store, which is on the ground floor of one of the company’s new office towers in downtown Seattle. The company said that it planned to open the store to the public early next year and that it would

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offer chef-made meal kits with ingredients for quickly preparing dinners at home. “Four years ago, we started to wonder: What would shopping look like if you could walk into a store, grab what you want and just go?” a narrator says in a video about the store concept, called Amazon Go, which the company posted online on Monday. Amazon did not say what its expansion plans were for Amazon Go. If they are anything like what the company has done with its other bricks-and-mortar stores, new locations will open elsewhere slowly over time as Amazon learns how customers use the first one. Amazon opened its first physical bookstore just over a year ago in a Seattle shopping mall. It has added others in the San Diego and Portland, Oregon, areas and has said it will open new bookstores in Chicago and Boston.

It is also working on another grocery store concept that would allow customers to order food items online and then pick them up quickly by pulling into parking stalls. Two such stores are under construction in Seattle, according to documents filed with the city’s planning department and people with knowledge of the effort who asked for anonymity because the plans were confidential. Pia Arthur, an Amazon spokeswoman, declined to comment on the grocery pick-up locations. In the grand scheme of Amazon’s business, analysts consider the retail stores to be an infinitesimal portion of the more than $135 billion in sales expected from the company this year. But the plans reflect a growing recognition by the company that certain categories of shopping are unlikely to move completely online. In some cases, it is simply more convenient to buy items in a store or more attractive to browse for them on physical shelves. “The way we think about it is the size of online retail is going to continue to grow dramatically but there will always be an offline option,” said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. “They’re trying to streamline and capture a portion of that offline experience.”© 2016 New York Times News Service

YOGA

HOW TO LOWER STRESS AND INFLAMMATION BY YOGA BREATHING Marlynn Wei, MD, JD, a board-certified Harvard and Yale-trained psychiatrist and therapist in New York City, and author of the upcoming book 'The Harvard Medical School Guide to Yoga', shows how to lower stress and inflammation through a simple yoga breathing technique. oga isn’t just about physical poses. The ancient practice has specific yogic breathing techniques known as pranayama. Yoga breathing has been scientifically shown decrease stress, lower blood pressure, and improve immunity. A new study has found that yoga breathing may also lower stressrelated inflammation in the body.

The study published in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine found that yoga breathing for just 20 minutes was able to lower stress-related markers of inflammation measured in the saliva. Researchers examined levels of biomolecules in the body called cytokines in the saliva of twenty participants. Half of the group read text for 20 minutes while the other half did specific yoga breathing exercises: 10 minutes of Om chanting and 10 minutes of rhythmic breathing. Om chanting is an ancient practice that repeats the sound or vibration “Aum.” Rhythmic breathing is a simple breathing exercise that regulates the breath based on specific counts. In this study, yoga instructors taught participants to inhale for two counts, hold for eight counts, and exhale for four counts. The notation for this SEASONAL MAGAZINE

breathing exercise is 2-8-4, which based on inhalation-hold-exhalation. (Note: There can also be a pause at the end of your breath cycle after exhalation, which is a more advanced technique). Researchers measured samples from the beginning of the exercise in fiveminute intervals up to 20 minutes and found that, at the end of 20 minutes, three stress-related biomarkers significantly decreased in those who did the yoga breathing exercise but not in people who were just reading. Rhythmic Breathing Exercise You can experience the relaxing effects of yoga breathing at home, with as little time as one minute a day. Rhythmic yoga breathing can reduce stress and improve focus, and many ratios (not just the 2-8-4 exercise in the study) can be helpful. Just a short but important note of caution: Yoga should never be painful—this goes for breathing exercises, too. Rhythmic breathing is a simple yoga breathing technique with set intervals for inhalation, exhalations, with additional pauses after inhalations or exhalations. The breath has four parts: inhalation, pause at the “top” of the breath,” exhalation, and a pause at the

“bottom” of the breath. Adding pauses after exhalations is a more advanced technique and should be reserved for those with yoga breathing experience. Try a simple yoga breathing exercise for as little as a minute a day to reduce stress and relax. It's best to pick a regular time to practice yoga breathing, whether it's first thing in the morning, when you transition from work to home, or right before bedtime. Come to a comfortable seat and sit upright with your spine tall. Close your eyes and bring your attention to your natural breath. Inhale through your nostrils for four counts and imagine your lungs filling up from the bottom, middle, and all the way to the top. Exhale through your nostril for four counts. Imagine your lungs emptying from top, middle, and the bottom. Repeat this breath pattern for 10 cycles. Next, inhale your nostrils for four counts, hold for four counts, and then exhale through your nostrils for four counts. Repeat this breath pattern for 10 cycles. Once you are comfortable timing of yo

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NEWS IN BRIEF

President Obama's family vacations bill crosses Rs. 577 crore US President Barack Obama and his family have spent over $85 million (around ?577 crore) of taxpayer money on vacations since they moved into the White House, reports said. The first family's vacation to Hawaii last year cost $4.8 million (around ?32.6 crore), the reports added. Watchdog group Judicial Watch alleged that Obama is "abusing" Air Force and Secret Service.

DELHI GOVT TIES-UP WITH PVT HOSPITALS FOR FREE MRIS FOR POOR

MASAYOSHI SON TO INVEST $50 BILLION IN US POST TRUMP MEETING SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son on Tuesday pledged to invest $50 billion in the US and create 50,000 jobs in startups and new companies. US President-elect Donald Trump claimed that Son said he "would never do this" if Trump had not won the presidential election. The investments will be made through American telecom Sprint, of which 82% is owned by SoftBank.

The Delhi government has tied-up with eight private diagnostic centres to provide free MRI and CT scan facilities to people with an annual income of less than ?3 lakh. The initiative is aimed at reducing the long waiting periods for these tests and is restricted to those who have lived in the capital for at least three years.

SERVICE TAX ON CARD PAYMENTS UP TO RS. 2,000 WAIVED OFF In an effort to promote cashless payments post demonetisation, the government on Thursday waived off the service tax charged on debit and credit card transactions of up to ?2,000. This comes more than a week after the government asked the banks to waive transaction charges on debit card payments till December 31.

Sreesanth to return to cricket with Scotland League Former Indian pacer S Sreesanth, who was banned for life by the BCCI, has announced he will return to professional cricket with the Scotland League next year. Sreesanth was banned for life by the BCCI after being accused of spot-fixing in the IPL in 2013. A trial court dropped charges against the cricketer last year, but the ban was upheld.

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HIGHER EDUCATION

INSIDE THE BOOMING BUT DUBIOUS RESEARCH BY INDIAN UNIVERSITIES Faculty and scholars from some of India's leading science and engineering institutions have published academic papers in so-called "predatory journals" - online publications that accept poor-quality papers without adequate peer review, an analysis has found. he finding reflects what some scientists say is a lack of institutional initiatives to curb poorquality or junk research. The analysis of 3,300 academic papers from India in predatory journals has found that while government and private colleges made up 51 per cent of the papers, national institutions contributed 11 per cent. Three Indian PhD scholars have, through this analysis, flagged concerns afresh about India's large contributions to predatory journals, which many believe are exploiting researchers who are under pressure to show papers to gain academic positions or promotions. Their exercise, which also involved quizzing fellow researchers, has found that about 80 per cent of those who had published in predatory journals paid personally for the publication of their papers, while others used funds from their institutions or government agencies. "Our (government) funding agencies and the University Grants Commission should act immediately to discourage publishing in predatory journals," G. Saroja Seethapathy, a PhD scholar at the school of pharmacy at the University of SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Oslo, Norway, who led the study, told The Telegraph . Seethapathy, collaborating with J.U. Santosh Kumar and A.S. Hareesha, PhD scholars in institutions in Bangalore, scrutinised 3,300 arbitrarily selected papers from India that had been published between September 2015 and February 2016 in 350 journals. These journals were picked from a list prepared by the American librarian Jeffrey Beall, who has been tracking predatory journals. Their analysis found that among the papers from national institutions, 15 per cent emerged from laboratories under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, 9 per cent from the Indian Institutes of Technology, and 42 per cent from other institutions, including the Central Ayurveda Dietetics Research Institute, Bangalore. "We already knew that India was a major hub for predatory publishers. This new analysis shows there is also a big market (among researchers) within India," said Madhukar Pai, a senior epidemiologist at the McGill University, Canada, who was not associated with the analysis. "This can have disastrous consequences. Bad or junk science can overwhelm the

good; bad health research could impact patient care. It may also mislead some researchers into wasting resources on leads that are not real." A global study last year of papers published in predatory journals between 2010 and 2014 had found India dominating as a source of predatory journals and in the authorship of papers in such journals. The study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, by information scientists from the Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland, had noted that 27 per cent of predatory publishers were Indiabased, and 34 per cent of the papers in predatory journals worldwide were from

Indian institutions. However, researchers who authored some of the sampled papers argued that the definition of a predatory journal was subjective and that not all the papers in journals labelled by some as predatory were junk.

Some scientists said that researchers may be tempted to turn to predatory journals when their academic papers are rejected, or look likely to be rejected, by other journals because they have failed or are likely to fail to clear the peer review.

"The issue of predatory journals is serious, but a journal someone calls predatory may not be viewed as predatory by someone else," said a biotechnology teacher from a New Delhi-based university.

"As long as it is not fraudulent research, what is the harm in making public research through any journal that is easily accessible to those who want to read it?" asked one researcher.

"The scientific content of the papers determines the respect a journal gets. Over time, journals that accept poorquality research will just die away."

A GLOBAL STUDY LAST YEAR OF PAPERS PUBLISHED IN PREDATORY JOURNALS HAD FOUND INDIA DOMINATING AS A SOURCE OF SUCH JOURNALS AND IN THE AUTHORSHIP OF PAPERS IN SUCH JOURNALS.

India's departments of science and technology and biotechnology, under the Union science and technology ministry, had in a 2014 policy document expressed support for open-access online publishing and recognised the right of researchers to publish in journals of their own choice. Many scientists are worried that India's contributions to predatory journals will persist if government agencies, including the University Grants Commission, fail to set well-defined rules to curb the practice. "This is a worldwide phenomenon but has become big in India, probably because of neglect by policy makers and a lack of awareness among young scholars and even faculty," said Krishnamurthy Bhat, a professor at the Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Seethapathy and his colleagues, who had sent questionnaires to 2,000 faculty members, received only 480 responses. Over 80 per cent of the respondents said they had sent their papers to predatory journals despite being aware of the controversy linked to predatory publishing. The analysis refutes suggestions that only young, inexperienced scholars and teachers send papers to predatory journals. Among those with such papers who responded to their questionnaire, 45 per cent were senior teachers or scientists. "It is unfortunate. Anyone can now buff up a CV for jobs, promotions or fellowships by publishing in predatory journals after paying a few rupees or dollars," Pai said. "This makes a mockery of how good science is recognised and rewarded in academia."

(Credit: GS Mudur, The Telegraph) SEASONAL MAGAZINE

INTERNATIONAL

Did Einsten Get Speed of Light Wrong? A STUDY BY PHYSICISTS FROM THE IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON AND CANADA’S PERIMETER INSTITUTE ARGUE THAT THE SPEED OF LIGHT ISN'T CONSTANT, AND COULD HAVE BEEN MUCH FASTER IN THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF THE BIG BANG.

But inflation, proposed by MIT physicist Alan Guth in the late 1970s, was never widely adopted by the British theoretical physics community. And Magueijo claims that as an answer to various “cosmological problems ... inflation had won by default.” This propelled him to think about another solution.

In his theory of special relativity, Einstein left a lot of wiggle room for the bending of space and time. But his calculations, and most subsequent breakthroughs in modern physics, rely on the notion that the speed of light has always been a constant 186,000 miles per second.

"The idea that the speed of light could be variable was radical when first proposed, but with a numerical prediction, it becomes something physicists can actually test," lead author João Magueijo, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “If true, it would mean that the laws of nature were not always the same as they are today." The theory of variable speed of light (VSL) was proposed by Dr. Magueijo two decades ago as an alternative to the more popular “inflation theory” – both offer possible solutions to the same SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Inflation theory, which suggests that the universe expanded rapidly before slowing down, provides one potential answer to the dilemma. The early universe could have evened out just before expanding, physicists say, if special conditions were present at the time. In 2003, Lori Valigra reported for The Christian Science Monitor:

any physicists spend their days trying to prove Albert Einstein's theories correct. One pair of theoretical physicists is hoping to test whether the father of modern physics just may have been wrong about the speed of light.

But what if it wasn’t always that way? In a paper published in the November issue of the journal Physical Review D, physicists from the Imperial College London and Canada’s Perimeter Institute argue that the speed of light could have been much faster in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. The theory, which could change the very foundation of modern physics, is expected to be tested empirically for the first time.

to the edge of the universe and “even out” the energy lumps. But if the speed of light was always constant, it would never have been able to catch up with the expanding universe.

fundamental problem. Most cosmolo gical theories state that the early universe was inconsistent in density – lumpy, if you will – as it expanded after the Big Bang. The modern universe, by comparison, is thought to be relatively homogeneous. For that to be possible, light particles would have to spread out

"The idea that the speed of light could be variable was radical when first proposed, but with a numerical prediction, it becomes something physicists can actually test,"

VSL offers a different inconstant: the speed of light. According to Magueijo and colleagues, the speed of light could have been much faster in the early moments of cosmological time. Fast enough, they say, to reach the distant reaches of the universe before slowing to the current rate. Now, researchers hope to prove that theory by studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Physicists have long used this radiative "afterglow" to glean new insights about the early universe. And since cosmic structures leave imprints on the CMB as they fluctuate in density, scientists may someday be able to produce a "spectral index" of the universe. If VSL theory is correct – if the speed of light really was faster after the Big Bang – the spectral index should come in at exactly 0.96478. That’s not too far off from current estimates, Magueijo says. "The theory, which we first proposed in the late-1990s, has now reached a maturity point – it has produced a testable prediction," Magueijo said. “If observations in the near future do find this number to be accurate, it could lead to a modification of Einstein's theory."

FAITH

Atheist Scientist Ste phen Stephen Ha wking Praised By Hawking Pope F rancis Francis

POPE FRANCIS APPLAUDED ATHEIST STEPHEN HAWKING AND OTHER SCIENTISTS FOR THEIR OUTSTANDING WORKS DURING THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES CONFERENCE IN ROME, RECENTLY. he pontiff, who is known to have a deep concern for the environment, graced the occasion in a delightful attitude as he welcomed theoretical physicist and self-confessed atheist, Stephen Hawking. The 79-year-old Roman Catholic leader touched the 74year-old ALS patient on his shoulder while giving him a warm smile. During his speech, Pope Francis pointed out the urgent need for scientists to find solutions to the world's problems. He also called for unity between science and religion in addressing food security, water shortages and renewable forms of energy. According to the Pope, humanity does not own God's gift of creation; thus, we have no right to plunder it, Catholic Herald reported. He said that the

modern world has got used to "thinking we are the owners and masters of nature, authorised to plunder it without any consideration for its secret potential and evolutionary laws, as if it were an inert

Pope Francis added that the world needs an ecological conversion where people should understand their accountability to the environment and its inhabitants and try to execute proper social justice to overcome an unjust system that creates inequality, exclusion and misery.

substance at our disposal, causing, among other things, a very serious loss of biodiversity." Pope Francis added that the world needs an ecological conversion where people should understand their accountability to the environment and its inhabitants and try to execute proper social justice to overcome an unjust system that creates inequality, exclusion and misery. The Pope continued that it is for the scientists to "build a cultural model to tackle the crisis of climate change and its social consequences so that enormous productive capacities are not reserved only to the few." In order for that to be successful, he added that the scientists should be free of economic, political and ideological interests as well. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

HEALTHCARE

HOW ASTER MEDCITY REMAINS YEARS AHEAD OF COMPETITION

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ochi is only a Tier-II city of India, but it is home to arguably one of the finest multi super-speciality hospitals in India. Aster Medcity was so when it was launched a few years back, and Aster Medcity remains so even now, being the first JCI accredited quaternary care hospital in Kerala. Seasonal Magazine takes a look at the unique strengths that make Aster Medcity years ahead of its competition.

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International Tie-ups:

Aster Medcity has recently entered into a tie-up with USA’s Thomas Jefferson University whose flagship is the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. TJU is the largest free-standing health sciences university in the US state of Philadelphia and the tie-up will help Aster in taking its already successful multi-organ transplant program to world-class levels. Soon to follow will be a tie-up in the bone marrow transplant program. The TJU team was highly appreciative of the landmark surgeries performed at Aster, including the first split liver transplant, and the first simultaneous pancreas kidney transplant, among others.

Inspiring Leadership:

Aster Medcity as well as its parent Aster DM Healthcare have been founded by Padmasri Dr. Azad Moopen, a renowned doctor turned medical entrepreneur, whose achievements in the field are unparalleled in Middle East and India. While Dr. Moopen had visited many of the best healthcare facilities in the world, and implemented some of the best practices he found there, across his chain, it was a visit to the famed Mayo Clinic of USA that inspired him to start Aster Medcity. He has conceptualized the state-of-the-art facility with one Multi-speciality hospital and eight Centres of Excellence.

Transformational Management:

Aster Medcity is led by its CEO Dr. Harish Pillai who is also the Cluster Head for parent Aster DM Healthcare’s Kerala operations that spans two more hospitals. A medical doctor with MHA from Apollo Institute and MBA from Frankfurt, Germany, Dr. Harish Pillai was earlier the CEO of Egypt’s biggest JCI accredited private tertiary care Hospital for 7 years, and before that, Director of a SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Dr. Azad Moopen, Founder

ASTER MEDCITY AS WELL AS ITS PARENT ASTER DM HEALTHCARE HAVE BEEN FOUNDED BY PADMASRI DR. AZAD MOOPEN, A RENOWNED DOCTOR TURNED MEDICAL ENTREPRENEUR, WHOSE ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE FIELD ARE UNPARALLELED IN MIDDLE EAST AND INDIA.

leading Dubai based hospital. The Chief of Medical Services at Aster Medcity is Dr. V Narayanan Unni, a doctor with 3 decades of experience and profound knowledge in all aspects of medicine, who was formerly with Kasturba Medical College, Manipal.

Community Engagement:

Aster Medcity has been contributing to the community through its CSR wing, Dr. Moopen’s Foundation. It is doing pioneering work, along with government agencies, in Nelliyampathy, where a large number of cancer cases, affecting the intestinal tract, blood, lungs, and liver, along with a high rate of congenital disorders are prevalent among the plantation workers. Aster Medcity has also been

at the forefront of an initiative to clean up the Periyar River from the increasing level of plastic debris polluting it. Many specialist doctors of Aster, across it specialities, have also been at the forefront of educating the masses on emerging health problems.

Unparalleled Technology:

Aster Medcity has several advanced medical technologies that are not found elsewhere in Kerala, and very rare in most Indian hospitals too. Aster has Robotic Surgery with the famed da Vinci Robot - a highly advanced surgical Robot that performs minimally invasive surgeries with utmost precision across seven super specialities. Aster's 22 Operation Theatres are also the first implementations in South India of the world's best ORI Fusion Digital Integrated OTs using Karl Storz OR1 Fusion, which is a leader across Asia Pacific. Aster Medcity also features latest diagnostics and the first robotic pharmacy in India.

ASTER MEDCITY HAS RECENTLY ENTERED INTO A TIE-UP WITH USAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY WHOSE FLAGSHIP IS THE SIDNEY KIMMEL MEDICAL COLLEGE.

Impressive Specialists: Aster Medcity has so far succeeded in attracting some of the finest medical talents from across Kerala and India, across its 8 Centres of Excellence and its Multi-speciality hospital. These physicians and surgeons are shining all the more since coming to Aster, as for many of them their full potential is

Dr. Harish Pillai, CEO

being unleashed now as the superior systems available at Aster allows them to focus more on their passion of healing. The team is also noted for its right blend of experience and knowledge, maturity and youthfulness. Each department of Aster Medcity is not reliant on a single reputed doctor, but has several reputed doctors working as a team.

Impeccable Parentage:

Aster Medcity is by Aster DM Healthcare, one of the largest healthcare chains in Asia, spanning several Middle East countries, India, and Philippines. Its noted healthcare brands include Aster, MIMS, Prime, Access, Medcare, & DM WIMS. In India, it is present in several Indian cities including Kochi, Bengaluru Hyderabad, Kozhikode, Wayanad, & Kolhapur. The Group excels across various formats of healthcare, including quaternary care hospitals, smaller SEASONAL MAGAZINE

ASTER MEDCITY IS BY ASTER DM HEALTHCARE, ONE OF THE LARGEST HEALTHCARE CHAINS IN ASIA, SPANNING SEVERAL MIDDLE EAST COUNTRIES, INDIA, AND PHILIPPINES.

Dr. V Narayanan Unni, Chief of Medical Services

clinics, and retail pharmacies. Altogether Aster runs 15 hospitals, 83 clinics, and 180 retail pharmacies. Aster Medcity is the pinnacle of the Group’s achievements.

Healing Ambience: Everything about Aster Medcity lives up to its slogan – ‘We’ll Treat You Well.” Aster has been designed, built, and operated upon a higher understanding that it is not just specialists or technology that heals, but the ambience and the invisible systems that go on with clockwork precision. A visit to Aster doesn’t feel like a visit to a 670-bed quaternary care facility, but to a lovely 40-acre waterfront campus which is tranquilizing in its effect. Spacious rooms, lounges, and facilities assure privacy, access, and peace. Last but not the least, comes the very helpful support staff comprising of certified nurses and qualified technicians.

USA

The Lobbies Behind Trump

By George Monbiot

MANY OF HIS STAFFERS ARE FROM AN OPAQUE CORPORATE MISINFORMATION NETWORK. WE MUST UNDERSTAND THIS IF WE ARE TO HAVE ANY HOPE OF FIGHTING BACK AGAINST THEM.

es, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are. I know all too well, because I have spent the past 15 years fighting them. Over this time, I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government. I first encountered the machine when writing about climate change. The fury and loathing directed at climate scientists and campaigners seemed incomprehensible until I realised they were fake: the hatred had been paid for. The bloggers and institutes whipping up this anger were funded by oil and coal companies. Among those I clashed with was Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI calls itself a thinktank, but looks to me like a corporate lobbying group. It is not transparent about its funding, but we now know it has received $2m from ExxonMobil, more than $4m from a group called the Donors Trust (which represents various corporations and billionaires), $800,000 from groups set up by the tycoons Charles and David Koch, and substantial sums from coal, SEASONAL MAGAZINE

tobacco and pharmaceutical companies. For years, Ebell and the CEI have attacked efforts to limit climate change, through lobbying, lawsuits and campaigns. An advertisement released by the institute had the punchline “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution. We call it life.” It has sought to eliminate funding for environmental education, lobbied against the Endangered Species Act, harried climate scientists and campaigned in favour of mountaintop removal by coal companies. In 2004, Ebell sent a memo to one of George W Bush’s staffers calling for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to be sacked. Where is Ebell now? Oh – leading Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency. Charles and David Koch – who for years have funded extreme pro-corporate politics – might not have been enthusiasts for Trump’s candidacy, but their people were all over his campaign. Until June, Trump’s campaign manager was Corey Lewandowski, who like other members of Trump’s team came from a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). This purports to be a grassroots campaign, but it was founded and funded by the Koch brothers. It set up the first Tea Party Facebook page and organised the first Tea Party events. With a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, AFP has campaigned ferociously on issues that coincide with the Koch brothers’ commercial interests in oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals. In Michigan, it helped force through the “right to work bill”, in pursuit of what AFP’s local director called “taking the unions out at the knees”. It has

campaigned nationwide against action on climate change. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into unseating the politicians who won’t do its bidding and replacing them with those who will. I could fill this newspaper with the names of Trump staffers who have emerged from such groups: people such as Doug Domenech, from the Texas

Public Policy Foundation, funded among others by the Koch brothers, Exxon and the Donors Trust; Barry Bennett, whose Alliance for America’s Future (now called One Nation) refused to disclose its donors when challenged; and Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and others. This is to say nothing of Trump’s own crashing conflicts of interest. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of the lobbyists and corporate stooges working in Washington. But it looks as if the only swamps he’ll drain will be real ones, as his team launches its war on the natural world.

machine is to enter a world of mirrors. Spend too long trying to understand it, and the hyporeality vortex will inflict serious damage on your state of mind.

Understandably, there has been plenty of coverage of the racists and white supremacists empowered by Trump’s victory. But, gruesome as they are, they’re peripheral to the policies his team will develop. It’s almost comforting, though, to focus on them, for at least we know who they are and what they stand for. By contrast, to penetrate the corporate misinformation

The less transparent they are, the more airtime they receive. The organisation Transparify runs an annual survey of thinktanks. This year’s survey reveals that in the UK only four thinktanks – the Adam Smith Institute, Centre for Policy Studies, Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange – “still consider it acceptable to take money from hidden hands behind closed doors”. And these

Don’t imagine that other parts of the world are immune. Corporate-funded thinktanks and fake grassroots groups are now everywhere. The fake news we should be worried about is not stories invented by Macedonian teenagers about Hillary Clinton selling arms to Islamic State, but the constant feed of confected scares about unions, tax and regulation drummed up by groups that won’t reveal their interests.

are the ones that are all over the media. When the Institute of Economic Affairs, as it so often does, appears on the BBC to argue against regulating tobacco, shouldn’t we be told that it has been funded by tobacco companies since 1963? There’s a similar pattern in the US: the most vocal groups tend to be the most opaque. As usual, the left and centre (myself included) are beating ourselves up about where we went wrong. There are plenty of answers, but one of them is that we have simply been outspent. Not by a little, but by orders of magnitude. A few billion dollars spent on persuasion buys you all the politics you want. Genuine campaigners, working in their free time, simply cannot match a professional network staffed by thousands of wellpaid, unscrupulous people. You cannot confront a power until you know what it is. Our first task in this struggle is to understand what we face. Only then can we work out what to do.

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MIDDLE EAST

Aleppo: Is the Moral Case for Ousting Assad Still Relevant?

By: Carl Jaison

ALEPPO HAS FALLEN. IT IS BEING CELEBRATED AS A VICTORY FOR PRO-ASSAD FORCES AT THE EXPENSE OF ISIS. WHETHER THEY NOW REMAIN IN THE “WRONG” OR “RIGHT” HANDS DEPEND ON THE POLITICAL MOORINGS OF THE SIDE ONE SUPPORTS. NEVERTHELESS, GIVEN THE ONGOING REFUGEE CRISIS IN EUROPE AND THE SCALE OF DESTRUCTION AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS CAUSED BY THE CIVIL WAR IN SYRIA, IT IS ETHICALLY RELEVANT TO ASK THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE CONFRONTING THE MIDDLE EAST RIGHT NOW: IS THE MORAL CASE STILL STRONG FOR REMOVING SYRIAN PRESIDENT, BASHAR AL-ASSAD?

t is a feature of just war theory in its classic formulations that aggression is regarded as the criminal policy of a government, not as the policy of a criminal government-let alone a criminal system of government. Individual leaders may be brought to trial after the war; but the governmental system is not at issue. But what if aggression as an act follows from the very character of the system? This doctrine had been applied by the Allied forces while analyzing Nazi warmaking strategies during World War II. In this case, it was believed that Hitler SEASONAL MAGAZINE

represented a diabolical status quo and that regime change would be a necessary feature of the post-war settlement. It was not just the brute and aggressive wars fought by the Nazis, but also the genocidal policies it pursued that justified the demand first for unconditional surrender and then for political reconstruction. It raised the question of whether forcible democratization can be justified or if “regime-change” was a just cause for war. Although touted as a democraticrestoration-by-force, it is widely held

today that the regime-change in Germany was the consequence, not the cause, of the war fought by the allies. However, the Nazi case had been purportedly invoked as a ‘good precedent’ and hastily applied to justify the Bush government’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, one that exposed the foreign policy miscalculations of the US. The argument is not to discredit Godwin’s famed law or “the Hitler analogy” (a popular Internet adage created to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons to the Nazi regime). Rather, the invasion tarnished

the credibility of the just war thesis that was ethically necessary in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kuwait and Kosovo. In spite of the unpreparedness in dealing with the domestic situation before deposing the Ba’athist regime, the US would justify the removal of a tyrant facing serious charges of human rights abuses and massacre of religious minorities and political opponents. What had evidently surprised the neoconservatives was the worldwide condemnation against the US government for having triggered an intervention under the pretext of a ‘humanitarian crisis’ unfolding in Iraq and the coercive imposition of foreign ideas and ideologies on the largely politically-fractious society. Therefore, forcible democratization was deemed not only to be an alien phenomenon, but that it would upset the precariouslyconstructed Iraqi identity. The Nazi Germany and Iraq cases offer dissimilar intentions for intervention and constitute varying degree of success and nature of conclusions. Both, however, fail to neatly address the ongoing Syrian crisis and how President Bashar al-Assad has confounded many observers by holding on to power for more than four years in the face of a rebellion by a large part of the population. Assad’s Syria posits a strange problem to the US and its Western allies’ doctrine of just war. Assad, who swept to power, on the heels of a decisive victory in the 2014 election claims to have the mandate of the majority of Syrians (winning the popular vote by a margin

Vladimir Putin of 98,19,444 votes with a voter turnout of 73.42%). However, the transparency of the elections was contested and the results dismissed as illegitimate by the Gulf Co-operation Council, European Union and the United States. However the mere conduct of a democratic election was enough reason for most countries, including India, to welcome Assad’s coming to power. The point of interest, here, is to examine the nature of his rule and whether it deems fit to be condemned. As stated earlier, interventionism is a necessary evil when the governmental system or the nature of the regime professes a commitment to genocidal desires and routinely exterminates minority communities. In the absence of a neat categorization, it is reasonable to identify the ideological roots of the Syrian regime so as to understand the elements of its flagrant dictatorial oppression. During nearly five decades in power, Syria's Baath Party has evolved from an

Bashar al-Assad

The Nazi Germany and Iraq cases offer dissimilar intentions for intervention and constitute varying degree of success and nature of conclusions. Arab nationalist movement into a vast organization that has infiltrated every aspect of public life. When Hafez alAssad seized power in a coup in 1970, the party became a vital tool to instill loyalty, as well as help control the government and military alongside the pervasive security services. The Baath Party remained hugely influential, but real power was increasingly collected in the hands of President Assad, his family, close advisers, the military and security services. Despite this, in the eyes of many Syrians the party embodied the corruption, nepotism and stagnation that became so widespread. The party's senior leaders have remained loyal to the late president's son, Bashar al-Assad, despite a call from the main opposition coalition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), for them to defect in protest at the violent crackdown on anti-government protests that began in March 2011. In fact, it was only in February 2012, after nearly a year of anti-government protests and bloodshed that threatened the dominance of the Assad family and the Baath Party, that the constitution and the political party law were changed. The slew of reforms, however, did nothing to assuage the grievances of the Sunnis and the subsequent parliamentary elections in May were boycotted by the opposition and saw SEASONAL MAGAZINE

But, regime change, by itself may not be a just cause for war. As political theorist Michael Walzer argues “when we act in the world, and especially when we act militarily, we must respond to ‘the evil that men do’, which is best read as ‘the evil that they are doing’, and not to the evil that they are ‘capable of doing or have done in the past’.

pro-government parties win almost all the seats. There was to be only a single high-profile case of defection by a Ba’athist minister – then Deputy Oil Minister, Abdo Hussameddin, announced his defection to the opposition. Analysts say top officials in the Baath Party lead a privileged life, and stand to lose the most from a change of government. Many also belong to Syria's minority groups, including the president's own Alawite sect, and see the uprising as a struggle for survival. It therefore seems unlikely that Baath Party leaders will abandon the president in the near future, regardless of the increasing international pressure and rising death toll. The US and its NATO allies had rigorously pursued the good old containment policy against Syria to bring to attention the gross violations committed by the regime. In January 2013, President Obama was asked in an interview how he "wrestled" with the Syria conflict. He would judge options, he said, based on whether they, among other things, "trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons" or "offer the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime." Since then, however, the violence has become worse, chemical weapons have been used repeatedly, and a stable future for Syria seems more remote than ever. The debate in Europe has since revolved around the “good reasons” for keeping Assad in place and containing the conflict. A growing number of jihadists joining ISIS seemed manageable with extra security measures at home and airstrikes on Iraqi and Syrian territory. Containment was, however still SEASONAL MAGAZINE

favorable with the public. But the conditions for Syria’s neighbours were already unsustainable. The 4.5 million refugees, announced by the UNHCR, were in fact closer to 7 million, and aid was dwindling. According to the US, Assad's departure would not by itself solve Syria's problems, but it could pave the way for the return of refugees and for building a local and regional ground force to roll back ISIS and secure areas it now holds. Yet there has been little in the U.S. strategy designed to compel Assad to step aside or to incentivize his supporters to abandon him. The absoluteness of the conflict can be assigned to the ‘symbiotic animosity’ between the Assad regime and ISIS. Undoubtedly, US meddling has transformed the region perhaps irrevocably but it would be a stretch to dismiss the existence of sectarian strife in the region. Therefore, the application of the just war thesis inevitably runs into the problem of identity politics in the region, making it a dangerous proposition. One by one, interventionist justifications seem credible in the face of Assad’s mass murder of his own citizens, especially when they were protesting peacefully.

The US and its NATO allies had rigorously pursued the good old containment policy against Syria to bring to attention the gross violations committed by the regime.

The harsh containment system imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War was, in retrospect, highly effective. It prevented both weapons development and mass murder and therefore made the war of 2003 unnecessary. But in another sense it was a failure: It did not prevent the war. The primary reason for the failure was, obviously, the ideologically-driven policy of the Bush administration. But there is another reason, less obvious, which needs to be stressed: The states that opposed the war on the grounds that containment was working were not themselves making it work. They were not participants in, or even supporters of, the containment system. The containment of Saddam's Iraq began as a multilateral enterprise, but in the end it was the Americans who were doing almost all the work. Had containment remained a collaborative international project, American power might also have been contained within it. Although far from addressing ground realities in Syria, the containment policy remains the best option available to pressurize Assad. But, with Obama leaving behind a legacy of inaction in Syria and Trump vowing to help Assad and Russia on dealing with ISIS, the onus on coercing Assad seems to falls squarely on the European nations. Putin has increasingly capitalized on attempts to discredit Western democracies and it is unsurprising why he is hailed as an example by nationalists, populists and even dictators like Assad. The failure of containment in Syria has led to Europe paying the price for it. If morality and ethics constitute decision-making, there is lots more to be done in tackling the refugee crisis, which has been worsened by Russia’s military intervention in Syria. The international community needs to up the ante instead of normalizing the situation in Syria. The opportunity cost in scaling up war efforts is massive and takes the attention away from ‘problematizing’ Assad diplomatically.

WELLNESS

Daily Coffee May Prevent Alzheimer's Risk Drinking three to five cups of coffee a day may provide protection against age-related cognitive decline and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, a new report claims.

he report by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a not-forprofit organisation devoted to the study and disclosure of science related to coffee and health, highlights the potential role of coffee consumption in reducing the risk of cognitive decline. The report concludes that a moderate intake of coffee (three to five cups per day) may provide protection against age-related cognitive decline and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. "Moderate coffee consumption could play a significant role in reducing cognitive decline which would impact health outcomes and health-care spending across Europe," said Rodrigo A Cunha, Professor at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Understanding SEASONAL MAGAZINE

and communicating diet and lifestyle factors that may limit age-related cognitive decline will help to improve the quality of life, the report said. According to the report, research published this year suggests that moderate coffee consumption can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's by up to 27 per cent. Research has suggested that it is regular, long-term coffee drinking that is key to

The report concludes that a moderate intake of coffee (three to five cups per day) may provide protection against agerelated cognitive decline and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

helping to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's Disease, the report said. The association between coffee consumption and cognitive decline is illustrated by a 'U-shaped' pattern in recent meta-analyses, with the greatest protection seen at an intake of about three to five cups of coffee per day. Although the precise mechanisms of action behind the suggested association between coffee and age-related cognitive decline are unknown, caffeine is likely to be involved. There are many other compounds in coffee, such as antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents, which may also play a role. Caffeic acid, for example, is a polyphenol (antioxidant) found in coffee, and research suggests that these may be associated with improved cognitive function.

HEALTH

8 Foods to Naturally Lower Cholesterol

By Dr. David Samadi, Urologic Oncologist

MOST OF US WOULD RATHER NATURALLY TREAT HIGH CHOLESTEROL IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. BUT DEPENDING ON YOUR CHOLESTEROL LEVEL, MANY PHYSICIANS WILL PRESCRIBE MEDICATION SUCH AS A STATIN. STATINS CAN BE EFFECTIVE IN LOWERING CHOLESTEROL BUT MAY ALSO CAUSE ADVERSE SIDE EFFECTS FOR SOME INDIVIDUALS. FIRST, ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR PHYSICIAN AND NEVER QUIT TAKING YOUR MEDICATION WITHOUT CONSULTING THEM BUT DO ASK QUESTIONS TO THOROUGHLY UNDERSTAND ALL THE OPTIONS THAT CAN BE HELPFUL IN LOWERING YOUR CHOLESTEROL.

ne option is to reduce cholesterol in a more natural way, namely by what you eat. If you have to go on medication do so. But also making changes in food choices can have a positive impact on bringing your cholesterol back into the normal range. Here are some possible cholesterol lowering dietary options to consider:

1. Oatmeal Whole grain oatmeal is an inexpensive nourishing food that has many health benefits including lowering cholesterol but also blood pressure, stabilizing blood sugar and providing fiber to fill you up. Oatmeal contains both soluble and insoluble fiber but the soluble fiber contains a component called betaglucan, which is particularly good in helping lower LDL cholesterol, the bad

kind, by blocking the absorption of it. Use either the old-fashioned rolled oats, quick cooking oats or steel cut oats as they contain the whole grain. Avoid instant oatmeal as it is not considered a whole grain and many varieties contain unnecessary additives such as sugar and salt.

important substances to battle high cholesterol. Almonds are rich in oleic acid, an omega-9 fatty acid that blocks absorption of LDL cholesterol and almonds also contain the amino acid arginine necessary for making nitric oxide. Nitric oxide helps relax the arteries so blood pressure is lowered and prevents blood platelets from sticking to blood vessels that could cause blood to clot leading to a heart attack. Pistachios are rich in monounsaturated fat and antioxidants both of which are heart

2. Almonds and Pistachios These cholesterol-lowering pros contain SEASONAL MAGAZINE

healthy substances. Together, almonds and pistachios provide fiber and phytosterols which can block absorption of dietary cholesterol. Since both contain a high amount of fat which means more calories, a handful a day is all you need.

3. Apples and Oranges These common fruits found year round contain a cholesterol lowering ingredient called pectin. Pectin, a soluble fiber partially dissolves in water to form a gelatinous mass which catches cholesterol. The trapped cholesterol is prevented from being absorbed and returning back to the liver and instead is carried out of the body helping lower

oxidation. It also has shown other cardiovascular attributes of reducing blood pressure and platelet aggregation. Garlic is generally safe and tolerable to use for most people but may cause a garlic taste or breath with slight mild gastrointestinal side effects. Use fresh garlic in cooking and consult with your physician on using garlic extract.

5. Blond Psyllium This herb is found in seed husks and the laxative Metamucil. It is primarily meant to be used as a laxative but also claims to reduce the risk of heart disease by treating high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Those with mild to moderate high cholesterol appear to benefit the most with reduced cholesterol levels and is most effecting when taken with food at mealtimes. Using blond psyllium (Metamucil) may also make it possible to reduce the dosage of cholesterollowering medication. Blond psyllium contains soluble fiber and works by trapping bile acids within the intestine excreting them causing the liver to take more LDL cholesterol out of the bloodstream.

LDL cholesterol. Apples and oranges also contain a class of antioxidants called polyphenols that can increase HDL cholesterol, the good kind, by helping to counteract atherosclerosis, the buildup of cholesterol and other fatty substances on artery walls. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll get more of the cholesterol-lowering benefits from eating a whole apple (with the skin) or orange as opposed to drinking their juice.

4. Garlic A recent meta-analysis study showed that garlic appears to be clinically significant in reducing total blood cholesterol along with slightly improving HDL cholesterol. Garlic has a remarkable ability to inhibit cholesterol synthesis and suppress LDL

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6. Flaxseed The humble flaxseed can be a powerhouse in combatting high cholesterol. The health-promoting properties of flaxseed is its rich omega3 fatty acid content and its high

concentration of lignin and soluble fiber. Research has shown that flaxseed appears to reduce total cholesterol and the bad cholesterol or LDL. It does not appear however to have much effect on increasing HDL, the good cholesterol. Flaxseed can be purchased whole or ground. Either can be used in various cooking methods of sprinkling into yogurt, a smoothie, mixed into meat dishes or baked in breads and muffins. Freshly picked green tea leaves.

7. Green Tea Commonly used as a beverage this product comes from the Camellia sinensis plant and the extract can be made from the leaves. Various epidemiological, clinical and

experimental studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between green tea consumption and cardiovascular health by its effectiveness in treating high cholesterol. The main polyphenol involved in green teaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorable effect on lipid levels is catechins. Catechins inhibit key enzymes involved in lipid synthesis and reduce intestinal lipid absorption thus lowering blood cholesterol levels. Brew a cup of green tea today and enjoy the advantageous health results it can have.

8. Beans and Lentils Last on the list but not least, these fiberfilled legumes are packed with soluble fiber, our friend in helping to reduce LDL cholesterol. Beans and lentils are fermented in the colon hindering cholesterol production and absorption. They also contain an array of phytochemicals preventing plaque buildup causing atherosclerosis. Low in fat, they are a healthy alternative to animal protein which contains the notso-healthy saturated fat and can be used in a variety of foods from soups to adding to rice or within a burrito.

ECONOMY

Why the Cash Crunch Might Take Longer to Resolve “You need to talk to RBI,” said SBI chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya, when asked how long the cash-shortage will last in ATMs and how well the banking system is ready to face the week when salaries get credited to employee accounts and people rush to ATMs / branches to draw money. resently, SBI has about 49,000 ATMs. If as reported recently 33,000 ATMs are dispensing money, that means about 67 percent of the ATMs of the country’s largest lender (by assets) are dispensing money. Let’s assume that rest of the banks too have managed to fill in cash in at least 50-60 percent of their teller machines. Things must have improved. But, then you can’t fool your eyes. A good number of the 2 lakh ATMs in the banking system continue to remain cash-starved even after three weeks of demonetisation announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and there are still stories of pain in daily lives. Even after 21 days, there are still no

visible signs of pain easing significantly, especially in rural areas if one goes by reports.

The problem of Rs 500 notes Both the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the government have been assuring the public that there is enough cash in the banking system and there is no need to panic. Then why do we still see continuing cash shortage on the ground? The reason is simple. There isn’t enough lower denomination notes (Rs 500 and below) to go around. The government mints have been aggressively printing Rs 2,000 notes, whereas the printing of Rs 500 notes, which is more handy to the common man for daily transactions, is a scarce item. Bhattacharya too attributed

to the continuing cash crunch to the shortage of Rs 500 notes. “The current availability is more of higher denomination notes. People want lower denomination notes, especially Rs 500. It takes time to change printing queues. Initially printing was concentrated on Rs 2,000 so as to provide bulk,” Bhattacharya said. How long more should it take before banking system gets enough Rs 500 notes? “Talk to RBI,” Bhattacharya replied. The RBI has not provided any details about the printing of Rs 500 notes. A detailed questionnaire sent to the spokesperson of the central bank on the details of cash shortage remained unanswered. According to a 17 November IANS report, based on capacities of the currency printing presses, the replenishment would take around six months, especially for the new Rs 500 notes. There are four currency presses one each in Nashik (Maharashtra), Dewas (Madhya Pradesh), Salboni (West Bengal) and Mysuru (Karnataka). The first two are owned by the central government through the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd. According to information available in the Finance Ministry's latest annual report, the yearly currency printing capacity of these two presses is around 40 per cent of the total in the country.

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The other two presses - in Salboni and Mysuru -- are part of the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Pvt. Ltd. (BRBNMPL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). These two, comprising 60 per cent of the total capacity, can print 16 billion notes in two shifts per year, according to information available on BRBNMPL's website. This means that total capacity in the country would be 26.66 billion notes in two shifts. If all three shifts run, as the government says is happening now, the four presses would be able to print 40 billion notes a year. Now, there were 15.78 billion notes of Rs 500 denomination in circulation and 6.84 billion notes of Rs 1,000, when PM Modi announced the currency ban. In short, it will take at least a few months to replenish the cash stock.

The 50-day promise On 13 November, PM Modi had sought 50 days from the public to tide over the hardships post the demonetisation. But, can the PM keep his promise? At this stage, it looks doubtful. Most bankers, economists and financial sector experts said that the cash crunch could last at least until March (three more months beyond what the PM sought) for things to return to normal. A recent report in the Quint, says that the printing of the new Rs 500 note has come to a nearhalt at the government’s Nashik and Dewas mints. The report, which quoted RBI sources, attributes a series of errors on the new Rs 500 notes and the low printing capacity of Nashik and Dewas presses as the reason that prompted the RBI and the government to call off printing of Rs 500 notes. If indeed this report is true, we are looking at even more delay for the Rs 500 notes coming in sufficient numbers to the rescue of common man. But one need to wait and watch how the scenario unfolds. "The situation is pretty bad. It shall take 5-6 six months before we reach normalcy," former RBI deputy governor KC Chakrabarty recently opined. Indeed, the government’s hurry to print the stock of Rs 500 notes and the lack of preparedness while doing so was evident when two versions of Rs 500 notes appeared in the public. There were printing errors on certain features like SEASONAL MAGAZINE

the shadow of Mahatma Gandhi’s picture, placement of the national emblem, colour shade and border size. This shows nothing but lack of preparedness by the central bank as far as Rs 500 notes are concerned.

Salary rush and hoarding In the coming days, the scenario could turn even tougher for banks given that salaries will get credited to employee accounts and to draw this money, there could be long queues before ATMs and bank branches. Evidently, there isn’t enough lower denomination notes to go around, which means some of the state governments will find it tough to give salaries. One example is Kerala government, which has already written to the RBI citing the lack of availability of currency to give salaries. The state has sought about Rs 1,200 crore worth notes to give salaries and pensions from the RBI, according to reports in local newspapers. What will likely add to the pain is the hoarding tendency of people till the time cash withdrawal limits stay. As of now, there is a weekly withdrawal limit of Rs 24,000 at branches and Rs 2,500 daily limits at ATMs. Even Jan Dhan account withdrawals have been capped at Rs 10,000 a month, as a temporary measure. All this would mean that the public who draw cash at ATMs and bank branches would be hesitant to spend it except for basic necessities. When the

speed of the circulation of the money is slow, that will add to an artificial cash shortage. That is even the money printed out of mints wouldn’t return to the system fast. This, in other words means, banks will struggle to fill up their ATMs and permit higher withdrawals. Even now, most banks are seeking the KYC details of their own customers who come to the counter to withdraw money, to ensure the person is the account holder and the need is genuine. But, beyond a point, banker at the counter cannot keep doing this. Until the government presses churn out sufficient number of cash units into the system, the RBI would not be in a position to remove withdrawal restrictions for public. More withdrawal restrictions, such the current one on Jan Dhan accounts, signal danger to the common man and tell him the problem persists and he needs to be cautious with the cash in hand. For now, the most optimistic assessments show the cash situation to turn normal only by March at the earliest, that is if the four government printing presses work in full capacity in three shifts. Until the time Rs 500 notes are available in plenty, there is an issue. The Rs 2,000 notes repel the average user as there is no change out there. One should hope that the RBI and the government prove these predictions wrong.

(Credit: Dinesh Unnikrishnan for First Post / IANS)

IS THE MERCEDES AMG C43 COMING TO INDIA SOON?

EARLY THIS YEAR IN JANUARY, MERCEDES-BENZ INDIA HAD ANNOUNCED THAT IT WILL BE LAUNCHING TWELVE NEW PRODUCTS IN THE COUNTRY THIS YEAR. THE CARMAKER COMPLETED ITS TARGET TODAY WITH THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW 2017 MERCEDES-BENZ CLA FACELIFT, WHICH HAS BEEN PRICE STARTING FROM RS 31.4 LAKH (EX-SHOWROOM, DELHI). CONSIDERING THERE IS STILL MORE THAN A MONTH TO GO FOR 2016 TO END, THE STUTTGART-BASED CARMAKER HAS DECIDED TO END THE YEAR ON A HIGH NOTE WITH A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS GIFT. The carmaker recently announced that it will be launching one more car in India this year, in addition to the initially planned 12 launches for 2016. While there is no official confirmation from the company regarding this new product, but we strongly believe that it will be the new 2017 AMG C43. Speaking on the sidelines, Mercedes-Benz India's head Roland Folger, told carandbike.com that the next launch will be a sportier version of a very popular sedan. Now the company already sells the Mercedes-AMG S 63, the C 63 S, and the CLA 45 in India, which leaves the AMG C43 to be the only logical choice. Moreover, even though the company also offers the petrol-powered 184bhp C200 and the diesel-powered C 250 d in India, they are still not performance cars per se. And the AMG C 63 S is still a bit on the expensive side at Rs 1.30 crore. So with the new MercedesAMG C43, the carmaker can now finally have a slightly affordable mid-level performance car that can go right between the C 200 and the AMG C 63 S. Coming to the car itself, even though the new C43's engine is designed by AMG, it hasn't been built on the 'One Man One Engine' philosophy like the aforementioned AMG cars. That being said, the technology that has gone into designing it makes it equally special. Under the hood, the car will be equipped with a bi-turbo 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine delivering 357bhp of power and 520Nm of torque. The AMG C43 will come with a 4MATIC all-wheel drive system linked to a 7-speed automatic transmission.

Messi's Father Starts Son's Transfer Program? PARIS SAINT GERMAIN COULD MAKE A MOVE TO TAKE LIONEL MESSI FROM BARCELONA. In the latest transfer rumor over the Argentinian star's contract, Paris Saint Germain's director Patrick Kluivert has made contact with Lionel Messi's father and agent, Jorge. The report claims that more contact will be made in the weeks to follow. Messi's contract negotiations with Barca have seem to come to a standstill, which has prompted discussions on possible transfers to other clubs. Although Lionel Messi's current contract with Barcelona will not expire until 2018, he has not yet signed a renewal. Barca is said to be quickly making moves to renew Messi's contract, and it's said that president Josep Maria Bartomeu will meet again with Messi's father, Jorge to discuss the matter after El Clรกsico next week. The offer is said to be a 'contract renewal for life', similar to what they are planning to offer to Andres Iniesta. Despite Barca making every effort to retain Messi, it hasn't stopped other clubs trying to acquire him. PSG is one of the few clubs in the world with the funds to acquire Messi from Barca. But as it turns out, it doesn't seem that the supposed meeting between Kluiver and Jorge Messi has happened, as per Sport. What is more likely to happen is the renewed start of contract negotiations between Jorge and Bartomeu. Bartomeu is said to explain the team framework to ensure that Messi remains comfortable in the club, such as the renewals of Neymar, Sergio Brusquets and the imminent renewal of Luis Suarez. The proposed contract for Messi will be for life, which would make sure that the Argentinian star will finish his career at the same club he started with. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

AGRICULTURE

HOW OPEN SOURCE SEEDS ARE COMBATING PATENTS AROUND THE WORLD, PLANT BREEDERS ARE RESISTING WHAT THEY SEE AS CORPORATE CONTROL OF THE FOOD SUPPLY BY MAKING SEEDS AVAILABLE FOR OTHER BREEDERS TO USE. FROM US TO INDIA, PRODUCERS ARE DEVELOPING 'OPEN SOURCE' SEEDS TO COMBAT PATENTS. rank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space. For nearly 20 years, Morton’s work was limited only by his imagination and by how many different kinds of lettuce he could get his hands on. But in the early 2000s, he started noticing more and more lettuces were patented, meaning he would not be able to use them for breeding. The patents weren’t just for different types of lettuce, but specific traits such as resistance to a disease, a particular shade of red or green, or curliness of the leaf. Such patents have increased in the years since, and are encroaching on a growing range of crops, from corn to carrots – a trend that has plant breeders, environmentalists and food security experts concerned about the future of the food production. A determined fellow dedicated to the millennia-old tradition of plant breeding, Morton still breeds lettuce – it just takes longer, because more restrictions make it harder for him to do his work. “It’s just a rock in the river and I’m floating around it,” he said. “That’s basically what we have to do, but it SEASONAL MAGAZINE

breaks the breeding tradition. I think these lettuce patents are overreaching and if they [were to hold up in court], nobody can breed a new lettuce anymore because all the traits have been claimed.”

their own varieties and save them for future seasons – two things many crop patents forbid. Dozens of breeders and seed companies have committed to OSSI since the initiative’s launch in 2014.

He continues to work with what is available, breeding for traits he desires while being extra careful to avoid any material restricted by intellectual property rights. He has also joined a movement that is growing in the US and around the world: “open source” breeding.

Compromised future

If the term sounds like it belongs in the tech world more than in plant breeding, that’s no accident. The Open Source Seed Initiative, inspired by “the free and open source software movement that has provided alternatives to proprietary software,” was created to ensure that some plant varieties and genes will remain free from intellectual property rights and available for plant breeders in perpetuity. As part of the initiative, commonly known as OSSI, US breeders can take a pledge that commits the seeds they produce to remain available for others to use for breeding in the future. That doesn’t mean they can’t build a business with or sell them. What the pledge does is allow farmers who buy seeds from an open-source breeder to cross them with other material to breed

For University of Wisconsin–Madison professor emeritus and OSSI board member Jack Kloppenburg, control of seeds and the ability to breed new crops are matters of both food security and environmental protection. Seeds play a role in larger issues like biodiversity, farmers’ rights, control of the food system and use of agricultural chemicals, which many independent breeders try to avoid or reduce by breeding natural resistance into crops themselves. Kloppenburg emphasises that the opensource movement is not about genetically modified organisms; patents can affect all crops, vegetable or grain, GMO or conventional, organic or not. “Control over the seed is what’s at the core of all environmental sustainability that we’re working toward,” he said, pointing to the increased consolidation in the global agriculture industry, most recently with the mergers announced between ChemChina and Syngenta in August and Monsanto and Bayer in September. “If you go to the farmer’s market and you’re interested in buying

Frank Morton

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good, local, sustainably produced vegetables, you also need to understand that most vegetables are coming out of a breeding process that is itself endangered. We will not have food sovereignty until we have seed sovereignty.” OSSI supporters argue that as planting material becomes more restricted through intellectual property rights, the future of the food supply is compromised because the gene pool is continually shrinking. OSSI executive director Claire Luby, whose PhD thesis focused on genetic variation and availability within carrots, found that about one-third of all carrot material has been protected by intellectual property rights, rendering it unavailable or difficult for plant breeders to use. Similar estimates do not yet exist for other crops, but experts such as Luby are confident that big commodity crops such as corn are even more heavily impacted than crops such as lettuce and carrots.

In an email, Monsanto spokesperson Carly Scaduto recognised the importance of genetic diversity, saying it’s crucial for the company’s operations and Monsanto works to preserve diversity through its four gene banks and by collaborating with institutions around the world, including the US Department of Agriculture. But she disagreed with the notion that intellectual property suppresses other breeding efforts.

have neither the time nor money for such formalities, and monetary incentives are not what move us. We want to improve farming for farmers. That’s a different motivator, not promoted by stifling the free use of the best and newest genetic resources.” Furthermore, Morton took issue with the very concept of patenting a plant trait. “You didn’t actually create it,” he said. “The plant created it, and the plant breeder has no idea how the plant created that trait. It is just nature at work.”

A matter of perspective

“Patents and [plant variety protection] inspire innovation,” she wrote. “Basically, the patent creates a map to allow anyone else to do the same once the patent expires. Oftentimes those ‘how to’ instructions enable others to accomplish the same result by finding another method to get there. So rather than hindering innovation, such protection facilitates it by placing more material and know-how in the public domain.”

For Carol Deppe, an Oregon plant breeder and OSSI board member, there’s another component to breeding that’s important. “When you breed a variety, you breed your own values right into the variety,” she said. “If you believe in huge agribusiness farms with monocultures that are managed with massive doses of herbicides, then you breed your concept of what agriculture should be like into that variety. I do exactly the opposite.”

Growers breed plants to selectively express desirable traits – from those that will improve a crop’s taste or color, to those that help crops thrive in certain environments and resist threats such as pests or disease. Opponents of crop-trait patents say the increase in patents is shrinking the catalog of plant material available to breeders at a time when the need for genetic diversity is greater than

Morton, however, argued waiting the 20 years for a patent to expire is no way to encourage innovation, and waiting that long to breed crops that can adapt to changing conditions is a losing battle. Even that misses the main point for Morton, though: genetic resources have always belonged to the commons, and should continue to be a public good, he said. “[Independent plant breeders]

While a handful of medium-sized companies (those with international markets but smaller than, say, Monsanto) hold patents, most smaller seed companies are able to survive without patenting – they either are opposed to the practice, have decided the process is too costly to be worthwhile, or both.

Morton, however, argued waiting the 20 years for a patent to expire is no way to encourage innovation, and waiting that long to breed crops that can adapt to changing conditions is a losing battle.

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ever, thanks to the less-predictable conditions brought on by climate change.

Morton argued that avoiding intellectual property protection also encourages

more active breeding. “Seems to me that my incentive to crank out new stuff is stronger than [companies that patent],” he said. “I need new stuff constantly to feed my catalog with new material, knowing that my competitors will be selling my varieties within a few years. A patent creates a 20-year insulation against competitive intrusion, which seems pretty cushy from my perspective.” Global response While the US seems to be leading the open-source charge, the concept is rapidly spreading around the world. In India, the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, which describes itself as a professional resource organisation, runs an open-source seed program, working with farmers to preserve seeds for traditional food varieties and to involve them in breeding new varieties that meet specific needs. The organisation also helps farmers access and market open-source seeds. German organisation Agrecol is in the process of launching an open source “licence,” essentially a more formal, legally binding version of the OSSI pledge for breeders in the European Union. (Regulations governing breeding differ from country to country, so the OSSI pledge cannot simply be adopted as-is in Europe or elsewhere.) In early November, the European

Commission, the EU’s executive body, declared that conventionally bred plants should be nonpatentable, marking a shift from the European Patent Office’s current stance, which permits patents for conventionally bred crops. The statement is not law, however; it will now be up to European governments to push the patent office to implement the commission’s statement. In October, the Dutch organisation Hivos hosted a conference on opensource seed systems in Ethiopia, attracting farmers, community seed bank operators, and representatives of governments, non-governmental organisations and seed companies from around East Africa to learn about the open-source seed movement and the global shift toward patenting seeds.

Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that NASA astronauts grew and ate in space.

Willy Douma, who runs Hivos’ opensource seed systems program, said the organisation is in the process of building a global alliance on open-source seed systems that it hopes to launch formally next year. A coalition of environmental and development groups (including Hivos, international development nonprofit USC Canada and the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration) has compiled a database of seeds and biodiversity around the world to publish the Seed Map Project. And in a report published in September, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food – a collaboration of philanthropic foundations, including the WK Kellogg Foundation, the McKnight Foundation and more – said that to ensure a resilient food supply, farmers need to be able to access, exchange and improve seeds, and have a voice in shaping seed policies. The report also emphasised the role that diverse, local seed supplies play in sustainable food systems – a connection that Luby of OSSI hopes more people start to make soon. “The food movement has focused on where is it grown and how is it grown, and the seed systems haven’t been as much a part of those conversations,” she said. “We’re trying to connect with people to say, ‘Hey, there’s an even deeper layer to your food.’”

(Credit: Ensia) SEASONAL MAGAZINE

NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY (NIC)

K SANATH KUMAR, CHAIRMAN

12 STRATEGIES NIC IS EXECUTING TO EMERGE STRONGER KOLKATA BASED PUBLIC SECTOR GENERAL INSURANCE MAJOR, NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY (NIC), IS IMPLEMENTING NEW STRATEGIES TO REGAIN ITS PAST GLORY. AFTER TWO YEARS OF OPERATIONS WITHOUT A FULL-TIME CHAIRMAN, NIC IS BACK ON TRACK SINCE FEBRUARY 2016 UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF K SANATH KUMAR, WHO RAPIDLY IDENTIFIED SEVERAL STRATEGIES TO EMERGE STRONGER. HERE ARE THE CORE IDEAS THAT ARE CURRENTLY UNDER IMPLEMENTATION IN NIC:

Target Put at Gaining 15% Market Share Before a few years back, NIC was the second largest non-life insurer in the country. But during the past fiscal, its position has slipped due to losing nearly 1% market share, and currently NIC has set a target of achieving 15%, well above its earlier highs, by the end of this fiscal itself.

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No Hidden Liabilities K Sanath Kumar after taking over as CMD, ensured that NIC’s books are cleaned up as soon as possible. While this affected FY’16 profits, the company and its owner GoI is now convinced that there are no hidden liabilities in its operations. This is giving NIC’s top and middle management the confidence to attempt better growth rates, going forward.

Bettering Corporate Portfolio Currently NIC’s Retail Business to Corporate Business ratio is 70:30. CMD Sanath Kumar is now focusing on substantially increasing its corporate business so that within the next three fiscals, corporate business is scaled up to 45%, and retail business is trimmed to the remaining 55%, which will improve premiums as well as cash flows.

Growing Retail vs Group Schemes Sluggishness in NIC’s performance during the past fiscal was also attributable to the large number of claims emanating from its group schemes. Now, the PSU insurer is in the process of growing its retail policies, and cutting down selectively on its riskier group insurance schemes in health. This will drive growth and reduce losses.

Building Upon Trust Being a government owned insurance major, NIC already enjoys the trust factor with customers. Now, the insurer is aiming to build upon this trust by focusing on better customer service. Apart from faster claims disposal, NIC is attempting this by re-training its officers, with the aim of being known as the friendliest general insurer.

Correcting the Solvency Ratio While NIC’s solvency ratio has fallen to 1.26%, all efforts are already on to improve it to 2%, well above the mandatory limit by the regulator IRDA. Within this fiscal itself, NIC is all set to improve its solvency ratio to 1.5%, which will help the general insurer to guard itself against unforeseen circumstances, which sometimes occur in this industry.

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Faster Claims Disposal NIC has set itself a target of settling 70% of claims within a month. Also, it has already implemented measures to settle smaller claims of up to Rs. 25,000 within a few days. In a recent drive it settled 3500 of such claims rapidly. NIC is also resorting to one-time settlements in all applicable suit claims that are mediated through courts.

Correcting the Motor Business NIC is working with industry peers to ensure that the currently unprofitable third-party motor insurance business is made healthy. Due to NIC and its peersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; consistent submissions at IRDA and Government, the pricing is improving in this only regulated segment of general insurance, and is expected to break even within two years.

Leveraging its Segment Strengths While the industry average for the combined businesses of motor and health is 70% in the total portfolio, NICâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ratio is 80%. While this has affected the company adversely in the past fiscal which was bad for these two segments, NIC is poised to grow faster now when these two core segments make a turnaround in the current and upcoming fiscals.

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Clear and Reasonable Fund Raising Plans

Under CMD Sanath Kumar, NIC has chalked out its fund raising requirements for the next five years, and this has been pegged between Rs. 2000 to Rs. 3000 crores. While the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sole promoter, GoI, will soon decide whether the route will be IPO or strategic stake sale, NIC has done its part by submitting its detailed IPO proposal.

High Fair Value of Investments NIC is a major investor in Indian equity and debt markets. It also holds significant real estate properties. While the book value doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reflect the true picture of these assets, NIC has arrived at a fair value for its investments and properties at Rs. 18,000 crores, which gives comfort to all its stakeholders, and strengthens its case for an IPO.

Rectifying Health Insurance Challenged by the unregulated and dubious practices of some segments in the healthcare industry, NIC has been working with its peers to correct the losses. Towards this, the four PSU general insurers have already floated a common TPA. NIC is also working to eliminate the unhealthy practice of undercutting each other in the unprofitable health business.

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SCIENCE

Remembering Jagadish Chandra Bose FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST SCIENTISTS.

3. He was one of the ‘fathers of radio science’ There is a common misconception that the famous biophysicist is in some way connected with Bose, the modern technology company which makes highquality headphones and sound equipment. This is not the case. Bose was, however, a significant figure in the creation of modern radio and sonic technology - while also having a keen interest in botany. During years of research, Bose made outstanding progress in bringing remote wireless signalling to life and invented an early version of wireless telecommunication. Bose would have been able to reap significant financial and commercial benefit from these discoveries had he opted to cash in - but he rejected wealth and made his inventsions public, to allow others to develop his research. In 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers named Bose as a “father of radio science”

4. He understood that plants ‘feel pain’

ndian scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was born 158 years ago, and became a world leader in telecommuni cations with innumerable achievements to his name. The polymath is the subject of a Google Doodle across the US, Australia, India and France to remember his contributions and celebrate his works. The doodle shows the legendary scientist, who was known across the world, with the crescograph - an instrument he invented to measure growth in plants, and which he used to determine environmental effects on vegetation. Here are five things you should know about Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose.

1. Learning Bengali sparked his interest in nature Bose’s father sent him to a vernacular school in Munshiganj at a young age, because he believed his son should know his own mother tongue before learning English. “I listened spellbound to stories of birds, animals and aquatic SEASONAL MAGAZINE

2. He was denied access to labs because of his race

Perhaps Bose’s greatest achievement was his invention of the crescograph, which allowed scientists to discover how the seasons and external stimuli affected plant life. The scientist worked tirelessly to chart how chemical inhibitors, temperature and light change the way plants grow, and advise humans on how to better care for vegetation. It paved the way for scientists to better understand how to cultivate crops in a more effective way, and encouraged people to take better care of plant life. In one particular report, Bose wrote that he believed plants “feel pain and understand affection” just as much as humans do.

After joining the University of Calcutta as a Professor of Physics, Bose was often denied access to laboratories due to his race, as the British Empire continued to assert its control over Indian educational institutions. The professor would resort to conducting elaborate experiments inside his lodgings: a 24 square foot room in downtown Calcutta, in which he struggled to house all his scientific equipment. He also reportedly faced racial discrimination and abuse during his time as a professor, but refused to allow this - and a chronic lack of funding for equipment - affect his pioneering research.

A small impact crater on the far side of the Moon is named after Bose. The Bose Crater is located close to Crater Bhabha and Crater Adler and has a reported diameter of 91 kilometres. The outer rim of the Bose Crater has become worn and the edges rounded by impacts, although the shape of the site has been wellpreserved. The crater was named after Bose to recognise his achievements in the field of wireless telecommunications in particular, which are said to have paved the way for satellite communication.

creatures. Perhaps these stories created in my mind a keen interest in investigating the workings of Nature,” Bose later told a conference at Bikrampur in 1915. His father encouraged Bose to become a scholar, despite the poverty suffered by his family, and he left Bangladesh at 18 to study natural science at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Discoveries that change the way you see the world

5. There is a crater on the moon named after him

IN-FOCUS AVANTI FEEDS LTD

12 STRENGTHS OF INDIA'S AQUACULTURE LEADER Andhra / Telengana based Avanti Feeds Ltd is a farm-to-fork leader when it comes to aquaculture, especially in shrimps. Over 23 years of its existence, Avanti has grown from strength to strength, based on significant forward and backward integration, as well as high quality products and technical services to its clients in both India and abroad. Founded by legendary entrepreneur Alluri Venkateswara Rao, and led by his son and visionary business leader Alluri Indra Kumar, this listed player is also noted for its stunning wealth creation for its long-term shareholders. Seasonal Magazine takes a look at the various strengths of Avanti Feeds Ltd that differentiates it from the competition. Pioneering Efforts Started way back in 1993 by Alluri Venkateswara Rao, who had proven his mettle in various business fields, Avanti Feeds has been an Indian pioneer in aquaculture, spanning operations like prawn culture, shrimp / fish feeds, and processing. This is the 23rd year of operation for Avanti, and this early mover advantage has been helping the company weather the many storms that have affected the aquaculture industry of India in recent years.

Synergistic Divisions From its inception onward, Avanti Feeds has steered clear of being a one-trick pony. Instead it has successfully forayed into all synergistic operations in the aquaculture domain including the core feed manufacturing and shrimp processing operations. This has helped the company scale up impressively, especially during the second decade of its operations. This also enables the company to better control its market share in both the segments.

While exports are one side of the coin, aqualculture companies can thrive with only strong domestic operations. Avanti has 5 Prawn Feed manufacturing units and 1 Fish Feed manufacturing unit, across West Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh and Valsad District in Gujarat, which together produce 5,25,000 metric tons of feed per annum. Its plants are located at the heart of aquaculture operations in India, thereby enabling better reach to farmers.

Reputation for Highest Quality Feed Over the years, Avanti has built up a name for itself in delivering fine quality

feeds. Made from world-class raw materials, Avanti's feeds are nutritionally well-balanced, ensuring greater appetite, faster growth rate, and high Survival rate, in both shrimp and fish. For the farmers, this readily translates to higher yields and higher profits, and this has been a big factor in winning Avanti the loyalty of the farming community.

Tie-up with Thai Union Aquaculture is a field where there is rapid technological evolvement, and a hallmark of Avanti has been its constant upgradation of aquaculture technology by bringing in from abroad the latest

Export Focus When Avanti started out in the early 90s itself, the company understood the need to tap the export markets. Towards this, Avanti perfected its quality standards, and today the company has a long list of loyal customers from USA, Europe, Japan, Australia & Middle East. Avant's shrimp processing units conforms to HACCP, USFDA, EU & BRC Global standards. Avanti is also ACC Certified for best aquaculture practices.

Strong Domestic Operations SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Alluri Indra Kumar

developments in the field. Towards this, Avanti has a long running and multifacted tie-up - spanning equity, technical, & marketing - with Thai Union Frozen Products Public Co. Ltd., of Thailand, which is the world's largest sea food manufacturer, as well as a major player in feed and hatchery.

Better Management Bandwith For many years now, Avanti Feeds is being led by Alluri Indra Kumar as its Chairman and Managing Director. A BE Chemical Engineer from University of Bangalore, Indra Kumar has been instrumental in bettering almost all facets of the business since he took over the operations from his father. It was Indra Kumar who forged the tie-up with Thai Union, and his marketing accumen signed up several new customers in key markets like USA, Europe, and South Africa.

Stress on Quality and Traceability In aquaculture, traceability of issues is a major challenge. At Avanti Feeds, quality of processes is taken seriously. A qualified and experienced team performs stringent tests for evaluation of raw material quality. Close monitoring and testing is done at every stage right from the raw materials to the finished products. This has resulted in the implementation of a practical traceability system.

Superior Technical Services to Farmers Avanti serves shrimp and fish farmers

through its highly equipped quality testing Labs in the coastal regions, for shrimp seed quality analysis, PCR testing, and Water & soil tests for shrimp culture. The company also guides the farmers in seed selection, and culture practices. There is also an option for farmers to supply shrimps to Avanti's processing plant. Resolving farmer complaints happen within 48 hours.

Exceptional Wealth Creation Avanti has been an investorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s delight for the past 5 years, when its share price surged by nearly 106 times. Powering the market cap expansion was its earnings expansion that was nearly 5 times in 5 years. In the market, Avanti is also noted for its high dividend yield (around 1.5% now), while the growing nature of the aquaculture market in India, especially after the introduction of the vannamei shrimps, is ensuring that the base effect will favour Avanti, gong forward too.

Prudent Financial Management Avanti Feeds is noted in the financial management circles for its small equity and low-debt model. The company also comes across as strong in several other core metrics like Return on Equity (RoE) and Return on Capital Employed (RoCE), which shows the prudent financial management in the company. This has enabled the company to focus on sales and profit growth in good times as well as not so good times for aquaculture.

Impressive CSR Activities CMD Indra Kumar, through group concern, AVR Trust, offers best quality education to thousands of poor and needy students through ABN & PRR Colleges of Science located in Kovvur, West Godavari District. Indra Kumar also runs the "Home for the Aged" which was started by his mother Late Alluri Subhadra Devi under "Sowbhagya Durga Trust" in Kannapuram, West Godavari District. The inmates are provided shelter, food and medical care, completely free of cost, in a very pleasant environment. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES

HOW NITTE UNIVERSITY ENHANCES THE COMMUNITY AROUND Should research be carried out only in laboratories, libraries, and papers? Should community interactions be carried out only with industries? Mangalore based private varsity, Nitte University, even while being a leader in research in the academic and industrial senses, has been at the forefront of opening a third front in research - which is all about engaging with the community around it using every possible opportunity, and contributing to its betterment. Nitte University is accredited with ‘Grade A’ by NAAC and is placed under ‘Category A’ by MHRD, GoI. Recognised as one of the best private universities in India, Nitte University is led by N Vinaya Hegde and Vishal Hegde.

hen you look at the rural landscape of India, standard of school education is definitely a matter of grave concern. Even for the handful of schools following better practices, there is no recognition or incentive to carry their good works forward. Nitte Education Trust which runs Nitte University In order to recognise such excellence in rural schools, has instituted an award from this year onward. The award is given exclusively to rural schools that excel both in academic as well as nonacademic parameters. The first prize will carry Rs 15 lakh, and the second price is of Rs 10 lakhs, which are clearly sums that can make a difference for the further betterment of these schools. To ensure transparency, The jury panel is headed by Justice N Santosh Hegde, former Lokayukta. Nitte University, being primarily a health sciences university, has also embarked on even more ambitious programs in community outreach, especially in its primary domain of healthcare. Recently it conducted a month-long Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) training program with the objective of training 5000 interested members among the huge pool of staff and students across its 35 institutions in Mangalore and Bangalore. On the first day of this camp itself, SEASONAL MAGAZINE

around 1000 students were trained in CPR, which is a life-saving first-aid when heart attack strikes. In India, more than 7,500 people die every year due to lack of CPR given at the right time. CPR involves repeated chest compression and mouth to mouth breathing. To give further publicity and effectiveness to this campaign so that more and more Indians from all walks of life are trained in CPR, Nitte University is now trying for a Guiness World Record in this critical domain. Nitte Institute of Communication (NICO), in association with Mangalore City Corporation (MCC) and the Green Brigade an NGO, has been working on an awareness campaign about waste management in the city. Towards this NICO Brigade has been set up which is a team comprising of students, established for the purpose of creating awareness about environmentalism and waste management in Mangalore. The team will be actively going around Mangalore city promoting waste segregation and thus furthering their vision of making Mangalore a cleaner and smarter city. Nitte University had earlier launched the Nitte Institute of Communication (NICO), which has started several innovative UG and PG programs in media and communication. With its

fresh approach at designing programs that blend theory and practice, Nitte Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s NICO has fast gained a reputation for itself in the domain of media studies. NICO students have access to a stateof-the-art Broadcast Studio, Print Design, TV Editing, and Web Design labs, updated library, Wi-Fi campus, modern ambience with aesthetically designed infrastructure and fully-digital facilities for professional education in media. The University also offers separate hostel facility for men and women, cafeteria, 24Ă&#x2014;7 access to health care, commercial bank with ATM, a post office, sports arena and university bus facility for daily travelling. Short films, documentaries, promotional videos, interviews with experts, and various fests organised by the media students of NICO not only speaks about their skills but also highlights how well Nitte has been focusing on this niche.

N Vinaya Hegde, Chancellor

Vishal Hegde, Pro Chancellor

The passed out Under Graduate and Post Graduate students have been placed in various sectors of media across India. The community outreach activities of Nitte University is spearheaded by some

of the top-most academic leaders of Nitte University's various constituent institutes. They are often invited as chief guests at noted events and utilize such opportunities to inform and educate the public as well as the government about the pressing needs of our times. Recently, Dr M Shantharam Shetty, prochancellor of Nitte University, shared his invaluable opinions on the all important domain of rising road accidents in India. Dr Shetty said that every day 250 individuals die due to road accidents and twice these are rendered disabled. But unfortunately the country is not at all disabled friendly despite court's directives. He said that as a matter of right every person should be insured to make treatment accessible to them. He knows this domain insideout as he is a former president of Indian Orthopaedic Association (IOA). Similarly, Prof. K Sankaran, who heads Nitte's Justice KS Hegde Institute of Management, as its Director had pearls of wisdom for parents in bringing up children. He exhorted parents to encourage their children to choose five things namely, curiosity over clarity, diversity over uniformity, passion over discipline, honour over success, and humanity over technology. Prof. Sankaran further said that children should be taught that technology cannot replace love and compassion. He also urged students to realize that discipline and freedom are the two faces of the same coin. The more discipline they have, the more freedom they will receive. The university also conducts seminars SEASONAL MAGAZINE

and workshops where eminent educationalists are invited to share their invaluable views. Nitte Education Trust, that runs the university, recently conducted a workshop for Principals of PU Colleges, which was well attended and led by eminent educationalists like HS Nagaraj, H Madhava Bhat, CS Shastry, and Saraswati B. The workshop articulated well on how the PU colleges should smoothen the shocking transition students undergo while getting promoted from Class 10 to plus-two. Nitte University also undertakes novel initiatives to make its graduate and postgraduate students understand the principles they study in class. Recently a unique sports meet incorporating core management principles was undertaken by Justice KS Hegde Institute of Management. Games such as cricket, volley ball, throw ball, kabaddi, and tug of war matches were held for men and women simultaneously as part of the event. An additional objective of the event was to imbibe professionalism in all walks of life. More than 300 management students participated in the event, and demonstrated their management skills through the games and sports.. Speaking about sports, the private university is one of the better equipped ones to handle different sports. Its basket-ball facilities are quite famous and even the national men's basketball team of India has recently trained at

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Dr M Shantaram Shetty, Pro chancellor

S Ramananda Shetty, Vice chancellor

Nitte's basketball facilities, before going abroad for an international tournament. Nitte Educational Institutes has also recently built a modern sports complex that is suitable for cricket, hockey, football, basketball, kho kho, kabaddi and all other types of sports. The complex has been named after the late cricketer Bellipadi Chandrahasa Alva (B C Alva), and was inaugurated by former Indian cricketer and ICC match referee Javagal Srinath.

The sixth annual convocation of Nitte University was held in September. Governor of Nagaland, PB Acharya, was the Chief Guest. Degrees were conferred on 636 students on the occasion. The split figures are 18 PhDs, 161 medical graduates, 140 dental, 10 pharmacy, 28 physiotherapy, 38 allied health sciences, 16 journalism and mass communications, and 17 biological sciences.

The sports complex is a brainchild of Nitte Educational Institute's Chancellor N Vinay Hegde who has fond memories with BC Alva. Family scion and key leader at Nitte, Vishal Hegde has also been instrumental in the construction of the complex.

Apart from Nitte University chancellor, N Vinaya Hegde, who presided over the programme, other dignitaries were Pro chancellor Dr M Shantaram Shetty, Vice chancellor S Ramananda Shetty, Senior neurologist Dr KR Shetty, Registrar Dr MS Moodithaya, and Director of curriculum Dr Rajashekhar, among others.

PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES OP JINDAL GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

WORLD-CLASS EXCELLENCE IS NOW AT INDIA'S DOORSTEP very initiative of O.P Jindal Global University reflects a laudable vision. There is an innate desire within its ethos to make a mark across the global academic community. Recent MoUs with Israel's top law and business schools is a step in that direction. That's not all. Prof. Raj Kumar, founding vicechancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University stresses on the need to build higher education links in the area of humanities and social sciences, mostly with universities in developing nations in Africa. The University also brings together leading public policy academics, practitioners, researchers, lawyers and

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government officials from India to participate in a day-long workshops and conferences. And through The Jindal Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship (JSiE), the University is also leaving no stone unturned in driving entrepreneurship in the social sector. The big factor, and perhaps the most important, is the positive impact made by the topmost leadership in running the affairs of JGU. The Dean of JGLS is the Founding Vice Chancellor of JGU itself, Dr. C Raj Kumar. A legal academician of international stature, Dr. Raj Kumar has studied at Oxford, Harvard, University of Hong Kong, and Delhi University. He is a noted speaker across the world’s finest universities and his recent speeches were at Harvard Law School and University of California at Davis School of Law.

Speaking at the Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit as part of a panel discussion on the place of global networks in reimagining the future Dr. C Raj Kumar, founding vice-chancellor of O.P. Jindal Global University in India, stressed that to build higher education links with Africa that, the humanities and social sciences offer the best route for collaboration between developing nations. “If universities focus on the hard sciences they…are constantly looking at advanced economies for technology transfer,” he said. “I think that the conversation needs to change. We really need to invest and reimagine the collaborative framework and [recognise] the need for emphasising the humanities and social sciences.” Such is the exemplary vision with which the University is run and it is a testimony of its commitment to tackling the pressing needs in the higher education space using

to promote academic, cultural and personnel exchanges that can enrich the experience of students, research scholars and faculty members from both institutions. The agreement will also facilitate student and faculty exchange programs and promote bilateral cooperation on research. These collaborative ventures help implement 10 different forms of partnerships: Faculty Exchange Programs, Student Exchange Programs, Joint Teaching, Joint Research, Joint Conferences, Joint Publications, Dual Degree Programs, Joint Executive Education Programs, Summer and Winter Schools and Study Abroad Programs. innovative strategies. Recently, JGLS signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the College of Law and Business (CLB) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) to create a framework for global collaboration in areas of academics, research, faculty and student exchange programmes. The signing ceremony took place at an elaborate event held at the Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi in the august presence of Mr. Reuven Rivlin, President of the State of Israel, who was on a six day visit to India and Union HRD Minister of India, Mr. Prakash Javadekar. The ceremony was part of an event organized by the Israeli embassy to boost academic collaborations and excellence in India. The Memorandum of Understanding signed between the institutions is aimed

This is very much in tune with the University’s partnership with over 160 institutions in 40 countries since its inception in 2009. According to Dr C. Raj Kumar, ‘international education and collaborations of this type promote knowledge exchange between global communities and enhance our student's transformative educational experience.’ Another remarkable initiative has been the stress placed on promoting research and high-level dialogue between various stakeholders in shaping public policy. On this front, Jindal Initiative on Research in IP and Competition (JIRICO), an initiative of O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) organised a conference on ‘The National IPR Policy and related IPR’ issues. The agenda had a 3-pronged approach: To identify the extent to which hightechnology firms undertake innovative activity across sectors in India; the legal, policy and market-related obstacles faced by innovators and the role of government in enabling collaboration between industry and academia; the role played by industries in inducing innovation and knowledge and

the issue of commercialization of IPs emanating from universities. Dr. Raj Kumar, further observed, "As a research intensive, global university, JGU has been attempting to advance the need for knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination in a range of areas and our schools have been continuously engaged in advancing that agenda." The institute also prides in nurturing a spirit of social entrepreneurship. The Jindal Centre For Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship (JSiE) helps spirited individuals to design their social enterprise model and bring it to market, and to explore how to scale up over the long term. The Centre for Health Law, Ethics and Technology (CHLET), Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) in collaboration with Ipas Development Foundation held a one-day consultation on access to safe abortion for minor girls with a special focus on The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) in New Delhi. Another feather in the cap has been the recent signing of a MoU between The Jindal Institute of Leadership Development & Executive Education (JILDEE) of OP Jindal Global University (JGU) and the Power Grid Corporation of India, a transmission utility company. The MoU has been signed for a period of five years and will see both institutions exchange intellectual and infrastructure resources. The curriculum will employ various pedagogical approaches such as lectures, simulations, small group interactions, action learning projects, and case studies. The Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), Sonipat has released an admission notification inviting candidates to apply for its various law courses. The last date to submit JGLS admission application is the 31st of May, 2017. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES

LNMIIT

Revolutionizing IT Education In The Digital Age Over the years, LNMIIT has been well positioned to take advantage of the digital wave that has gripped the country's youth. The institute is a pioneering voice in the field of IT development and infrastructure, and regularly contributes to the academic discourse on topics such as computing, communications, informatics etc. With praises from acclaimed IT associations and practice leaders, LNMIIT leaves no stone unturned in its quest for creating innovation in the IT space for the larger good of society. Championed by their visionary Director, Prof S S Gokhale, the institute is putting its best foot forward to realise the IT dreams of the country. n a boost to their laudable efforts, LNMIIT recently gained NAAC accreditation of Grade A and featured in the HRD Ministry's top 100 list of best universities in the 85th position. Indeed, a fitting way to bring down the curtains on a remarkable year for the institute. The LNM Institute Of Information Technology - Jaipur recently unlocked another achievement by receiving "The Best Accredited CSI Student Branch Award" from the Computer Society of India (CSI). The CSI is the largest and most professionally managed association of and for IT professionals in India. Among the many mega conferences that LNMIIT experienced this year, one of them was the The IEEE All India Students/ Young Professionals and Women in Engineering Congress 2016, that took place from 7-9 October 2016. The event witnessed a multitude of great inventors, professionals, entrepreneurs and visionaries of the country, with a theme of "Innovate to Create". LNMIIT also organized a Two Day National Workshop on Design & Development of Digital Library with DSpace : Challenges & Prospects from 1-2 December 2016. The purpose of the Workshop was to provide overview of an open source software - DSpace and also to give practical training to the participants to build digital repository collections and it will enable participants to design & develop their own digital repository SEASONAL MAGAZINE

using DSpace through lectures & handson-sessions by experts. The institute also hosted the Fifth International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI) 2016. ICACCI 2016 witnessed around 600 participants that included, Faculty Members, Research Scientists, Industry Participants, Research Scholars and UG/ PG Students from India and abroad. The conference had 8 parallel workshops and 5 symposiums along with the main

conference. There were 15 Keynote speeches and 48 parallel sessions in the areas of computing, communications, and informatics. The keynote speakers included Prof. Erol Gelenbe, Imperial College, UK (Inventor of G-Networks and the Random Neural Network), Prof. John N Daigle, University of Mississippi, USA, Dr. Peter Mueller, IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, Switzerland and many more. ICACCI-2016 was technically cosponsored by IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Systems, Man, and

Taiwan (NIU) for two programs - faculty and student exchange. While BTech or MTech graduates bagging campus placements in private universities is no more a news these days, what differentiates LNMIIT is its sheer success in grooming leaders who have went on to call the shots in numerous domains. While many private and public universities in the country pay lip service to next generation values like creating not job-seekers, but jobcreators, LNMIIT is one institution that has created more startup entrepreneurs than most other institutions in the private sector.

Cybernetics (SMC) Society along with IEEE ComSoc. The conference provided an international forum for the exchange of ideas among interested researchers, students, developers, and practitioners in the areas of computing, communications, and informatics. With an eye for global tie-ups in this space, LNMIIT recently signed a MoU with the National Ilan University,

Noted startup founders and co-founders who are LNMIIT alumni include Vishal Jhalani and Ankit Singhavi (The ELITE Express), Vidit Paliwal (Bigstep Technologies), Manu Yadav (Eunike Software), Saurabh Gupta (Nutrino IT Technologies), Utkarsh Jain (Codescape Cunsultant), and Sanket Modi (Lucideous). And donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ever think that this is a static list. Every quarter or year, another LNMIIT alumnus is likely to be added to this list, as the university is a topper when it comes to new student startups currently looking for investors in Rajasthan, and even in the whole of India.

Although their Alumni boasts of trendsetters in the digital space, there are notable examples leaving their footprint in social work and charity. An alumni from LNMIIT Anant Trivedi, along with Mahendra Bhakar, cycled 2500 km to raise funds for disabled kids. Software engineers by profession Bhakar and Trivedi have raised Rs 57,000 by cycling 2,500 km from Bengaluru to Kota for eight days to raise funds on the crowdsourcing platform, Milaap.

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PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES SYMBIOSIS INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Delivering On All-Round Excellence

The long-term vision of the University is there for everybody to see. SIU is certainly eyeing a panIndia growth, visible in the launch of their two recent campuses in Hyderabad and Indore. The former would cater to MBA and Law aspirants, while the former focuses on BBA and B.tech programs. But, it's safe to say that the University harbors not just expansionary dreams but is also looking to establish their credentials on certain fronts. A great showing in terms of student placements, a partnership with Google News Lab and setting up of an affordable health centre proves SIU's commitment to delivering all-round excellence.

ymbiosis is a family of 46 academic institutions, imparting quality education for over 40 years. It hosts over 27,000 Indian and International students on campus. Its seven faculties â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Law, Management, Computer Studies, Health & Biomedical Sciences, Media, Communication & Design, Humanities and Social Sciences & Engineering â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are some of the most sought-after programs in the country with a vision to transforming individuals, preparing and empowering them to make a positive impact on the world. Yet again, the institute made headlines in the just concluded placement drive. Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development has just concluded its summer placement season with a record number of job offers secured by students across verticals such as FMCG/ FMCD, Consulting, Ecommerce, BFSI, Telecom, Manufa cturing and Technology, Information Technology, Pharmaceutical, Infrastructure, etc. This year, the school saw a 36% increase in average stipend with the highest stipend emerging as Rs 2.50 lakh and an average stipend of Rs 1.14 lac for the 2016-18 MBA batch. The Batch of MBA 2015-17 also saw 50+ pre placement offers (PPOs) from business houses such as ITC, P&G, HUL, ABG, Colgate Palmolive, Yes Bank, JP Morgan, Capgemini, Pidilite, Goldman Sachs, Philips, Wipro, Cummins, Genpact, Vodafone, Honeywell, Arcesium, Titan, IBM, Indus Valley Partners Pvt. Ltd., & HSBC. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Another prestigious milestone includes Symbiosis Institute of Media Communication (SIMC) being chosen as one of the 46 Institutes across the world to be partnering with Google News Lab to offer cutting edge journalism courses to students as well as faculty.

meet the next generation of automotive skilling needs. Also, the IBM Research Grant in Predictive Analytics was given to SIBM this year, overcoming stiff competition from other B-Schools. In a separate development, Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce (SCAC) has become the only college in Pune to be conferred the status of ‘Colleges with Potential for Excellence’ (CPE) by the University Grants Commission in the recently declared list. While SCAC is not part of SIU, but affiliated to a state university, the development has come as further proof for the academic standards of Symbiosis Group.

In the field of medical science, The Symbiosis Centre for Health Skills and the Hospital Building situated at Symbiosis International University, Lavale campus is the country’s first ever center for health skills in line with Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s ‘Skill India’ initiative. The 100-bedded charitable hospital will provide affordable health care to the people from nearby villages. Noted corporates too are tying up with SIU for leveraging its expertise. For instance, Blue Dart, India’s most admired courier and logistics firm, and a part of the worldwide DHL Group, has tied up with Symbiosis to offer its employees an MBA program.

In another development, SIU which is gearing up to take its research initiatives to the next level, has tied up with the software-to-SUV conglomerate Mahindra Group. Singapore Management University is also a part of this tie-up and will explore solutions to

Celebrities who have visited SIU campus recently include Aamir Khan, who had shot a part of one of his movies there, and the noted actor who is also known for his social messages was all in praise of the life’s work of Dr. SB Mujumdar, SIU’s Founder. SIU units like SIBM also continue to innovate with great results. Their MBA with specialization in Innovation and Entrepreneurship is already a huge hit, and SIBM is now planning to focus on case studies and caselets, just like how Harvard Business School has made the concept famous. The institute recently opened a campus in Hyderabad offering MBA and Law courses for the time being. SIBM-H has gone on to launch an incubation zone to promote innovative start-ups. Symbiosis is branching out to Madhya Pradesh, with a campus in Indore, and the brand Symbiosis continues to be a favoured destination for top academics with the VC post there getting over 500 applications. Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies (SIMS)-Pune has released an official notification for admission to its full time Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGPM) programmes for the academic session 2017. The entrance examination to the MBA program will be conducted on December 18th, 2016. A recent addition has been the introduction of Certification programmes in Banking, Finance and Insurance (CPBFI) from Symbiosis School of Banking and Finance (SSBF) and Bajaj Finserv. SEASONAL MAGAZINE

IN-FOCUS SWARNA PRAGATI HOUSING MICROFINANCE

HOW SWARNA PRAGATI DIFFERS FROM COMPETITION

If rural and affordable housing finance is the biggest emerging opportunity out there, Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance has been making its waves felt in this large but untapped segment, across its core markets like Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, & Odisha. While the company is in a very narrow niche of 'housing microfinance' which is microfinance or group loans applied to housing finance, there are other reasons too that make Swarna Pragati unique. In October, Swarna Pragati which is promoted by veteran ex-banker Ramesh Kumar, attracted investments from a few reputed institutional investors like Omidyar Network, Zephyr Peacock, and Aavishkar Goodwill, in a Series B round of funding. Omidyar Network is the investment firm of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife. Investments were also made into the company by microfinance industry veterans Pramod Bhasin and Vikram Gandhi, who are also co-founders of the Asha Impact Fund. Seasonal Magazine takes a look at the various strengths of Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance that makes it unique in the industry.

HOUSING FINANCE TO GROUPS

Though rural customers don't have national level credit scores like CIBIL, many of them are having track-records with the NGOs and Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) extending microcredit for various farming and trading purposes. Though it is not very formal, it is very practical to use these records to assess the prospective customers or the Self Help Groups (SHGs) or Joint Liability Groups (JLGs) to which they belong. Swarna Pragati being a housing microfinance institution, primarily lends to such SHGs and JLGs. SHG is the NABARD promoted model having around 10-15 members, and JLG is the Yunus (Grameen) model having around 4 to 5 members. Members in a group can take slightly different quantum of loan depending on their individual requirements, but as in microfinance, the liability is jointly shared.

EXPERIENCE OF THE PROMOTER Ramesh Kumar, Founder, Chairman, & Managing Director of Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance, was earlier SEASONAL MAGAZINE

Chief General Manager of SBI in Maharashtra Circle. While serving in this role, he pioneered the bank’s linkages with Self Help Groups (SHGs), that not only propelled SBI to the leadership position in microfinance in the state, but elevated Maharashtra as the fastest growing microfinance destination. Later, as Chairman of NABARD’s National Committee on Rural Habitat, he studied and coauthored a report that has become the basis for government’s policy on rural housing. Ramesh Kumar started Swarna Pragati after quitting SBI, on finding that none of the banks and HFCs were implementing these NABARD proposals.

INCREMENTAL HOUSING FINANCE Rural incomes keep fluctuating, and that is why prospective home owners in the rural setting are so timid about taking a large and longer-duration home loan. To address this challenge, Swarna Pragati reengineered a new model of rural housing finance in which the company broke up the typical home loan into manageable

chunks of smaller and shorter-duration loans for building specific parts or modules of the house. Called incremental housing finance, customers use it for a specific task at a time, like building the foundation, building the walls, doing proper flooring, or proper roofing, or for building a small house with a room and toilet first and then adding more rooms, kitchen, workplace etc. Each such loan would be between, say, Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 1,50,000, and would span 3 to 4 years in repayment time.

PRODUCTIVE HOUSING Today, microfinance is often criticized by observers for funding nonproductive assets and activities like buying vehicles or consumer durables and conducting marriages. When used for such purposes, microfinance can lead its customers into a debt trap. But Swarna Pragati's model is quite different in microfinance as it funds only homes, which especially in an Indian rural context is a basic necessity whose construction and upkeep are taken seriously. Moreeover Swarna Pragati extends

support to what National Housing Bank (NHB) calls Productive Housing, which means that housing that also enables a livelihood like for artisans, small traders, and agriculturists. This is especially useful for women homeowners, who form a major part of Swarna Pragati's customers.

PARA-LEGAL MORTGAGE Swarna Pragati innovated the concept of Para-legal Mortgage, to bring financial inclusion to large number of rural families that are denied access to home loans as they don't have proper land records that a bank or HFC would accept. In India, there are grassroots level constitutional bodies like Gram Sabhas and Village Panchayats. In the rural setting, if a Gram Sabha acknowledges the ownership or possession of a land by a certain person, it is as good as proper land records for him. Through paralegal documentation, Swarna Pragati got these constitutional bodies to endorse the mortgage for the loan to Ramesh Kumar the community-acknowledged land owner. This has become a very viable solution for a vexing problem in growing the rural housing finance business.

TAILORMADE SOLUTIONS FOR DIFFERENT STATES Swarna Pragati Housing Microfinance is headquartered in Tamilnadu with its corporate office in Chennai. Apart from the South Indian state, it has major

operations in the Western state of Maharashtra and the Eastern state of Odisha, with offices at Nagpur and Cuttack respectively. The company caters primarily to rural markets, and the rural markets in none of these states are similar. So, Swarna Pragati offers tailormade solutions for each state like equitable mortgage in Odisha, registered mortgage in Tamilnadu, and in Maharashtra the company mainly provides para-legal mortgage backed by para-legal documentation that makes up for lack of land records by bringing in Gram Sabhas and Village Panchayats into the equation.

MANAGING OPERATIONAL COSTS Any institution lending to rural customers incurs high operational costs, as the customer locations would be remote to reach and service. This has been a prime reason why banks and NBFCs were shying away from rural retail finance. To overcome this, Swarna Pragati has partnered with grassroots level NGOs and MFIs who are regularly engaging with rural customers on a a monthly or weekly basis, and on such visits they also collect EMIs due to Swarna Pragati. The MFIs & NGOs do it on a fee basis, and Swarna Pragati incurs a cost of only around 3-3.5% for the collection, and thus cuts the operating costs to a manageable level. Swarna Pragati works with large NGOs in various states, like Gram-Utthan of Odisha.

MAINTAINING PERFORMANCE LEVELS

Within a short period of 4 years, Swarna Pragati has served 12,000 customers across four states and created a loan portfolio of over Rs. 110 crore. Its incremental home loan ticket sizes range from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 7 lakhs, while it also provides water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) loans of Rs 15,000 to Rs 25,000 for families in the LIG & EWS segments. Swarna Pragati fares as well as mainstream housing finance companies in asset quality and margin, even while it has been growing faster than such peers, at around 200% CAGR. Its NPA level is around 1% and risk-adjusted margins are in accordance with industry standards. Swarna Pragati's growth prospects remain robust as the shortage for houses in rural India is pegged at 40 million units.

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DEVELOPMENT

Hyperloop eyes Mumbai Pune transport link LOS ANGELES-BASED HYPERLOOP, WHICH IS DEVELOPING THE CONCEPT OF FUTURISTIC TRAVEL IN A NEAR-VACUUM, HAS APPROACHED THE TRANSPORT MINISTRY FOR LAND

he travel time betwe en Mumbai and Pune, about three hours by train now, would be cut to 25 minutes if Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has its way.

The Los Angeles-based company, which has designed a new way to move people, has asked the transport ministry for land to run a pilot project of its highspeed transportation service. Hyperloop is a concept where a podlike vehicle travels through a nearvacuum that’s contained within a tube. It can theoretically touch top speeds of close to 1,200 km an hour even when not running on full steam, using less energy than conventional modes of transportation. It is being heralded as the future of high-speed passenger and freight transportation the world over, with futurists such as Elon Musk backing the concept. “We use a custom electric motor to accelerate and decelerate a levitated pod through a low-pressure tube. The vehicle will glide silently for miles with no turbulence,” says its website. “We tested our motor in May, 2016, and will test the full system in early 2017. We’re developing routes in five countries. The

goal is to be moving cargo by 2020 and passengers by 2021.” Bipop Gresta, chairman and chief operating officer of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, says he met Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari and made a formal proposal to set up a pilot project in the country. “We’re not asking for money right now, we’re asking for land. If they want to put money, we can do a public-private partnership. But if they don’t want that, we have private investors. In the second case, we need to have land that is meaningful and not something in the middle of nowhere.” If the proposal goes through, Gresta says he estimates it will take eight months to do a feasibility study. It might take an additional 28 months from the time all the permits are acquired to roll out the transportation service. Unlike traditional high-speed rail

networks that need vast stretches of land for arrow-straight tracks, Hyperloops can be built alongside highways. The technology consumes much less energy owing to the lack of air resistance within the tubes. Gresta says the concept will be an ideal fit for India, which lacks high-speed rail and air connectivity. “India is a country that has a very particular situation. It has a high density of population, lacks infrastructure and a political environment that is willing to invest in innovation,” Gresta had said on the sidelines of Carnegie India’s Global Technology Summit in Bengaluru on Tuesday. Hyperloop Transportation Technology already has a 25-member team in India that is working on technology, mechanical engineering and other roles for its global ambitions. Further, the company is looking to partner with Indian educational institutes to have them solve engineering problems. The company is also in talks with at least two Indian firms for outsourcing some part of its manufacturing and other technology services. Gresta did not divulge the details on the companies. “We’re not selling transportation, we’re selling time,” says the company’s website.

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