SPO INDIA April 2019 Issue

www.spoindia.org Vol. III | Issue 11 | April 2019 | Rs. 50

Earth Day 2019 – How will corporates celebrate it? | 24pg

As 5G rollout nears, the debate on health effects becomes a major concern | 30pg

25 Start-Ups to look for Investment | 16pg www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 1

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LEAD STORY | 24

Editor-in-Chief: Deepak Kumar Sahu Executive Editor: S Mohini Ratna Assistant Editor: Samrita Baruah Copy Editor: C. M. Dutta Art Director: Rakesh Kumar Network Administrator: Ashok Kumar Singh Manager-IT: Subhash Mohanta Manager-SEO: Bidyadhar Behera BUSINESS: Vice President: Prasanna Rout General Manager: Ashok Ranjan Dash

CORPORATE OFFICE: A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110 030 Tel: 011-41656383, 46061809 Email: edit@spoindia.org

Earth Day 2019 – How will corporates celebrate it?

Bangalore: Bureau office Marketing Manager: S. Kamala Kar D-103 G.F., Ashish JK Apartments Thubarahalli Extended Road Bangaluru - 560066, Tel: 080-49530399 Mobile: 08904205750/9916134482

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Chennai: Bureau office Branch Manager: Mr.Parthiban K A2, R.C.Residency, Cholambedu Road, Thiruvenkada nagar, Ambathur, Chennai - 600 053 Mobile: 09840055626

NEWS

6 – 8, 10 - 11

CORPORATE NEWS

14 – 15, 33

SPO ANALYSIS 09

GARTNER SAYS MARKETERS MUST FOCUS ON HELPING CUSTOMERS IN ORDER TO REMAIN COMPETITIVE

Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Kiran Kumar 67 Sarada Park, Garia, Kolkata - 700 084 Mobile: 09903088480

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A WEAPON THAT COULD CHANGE THE GAME IF INDIA PLAYS TOUGH

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TOP 25 START UPS

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

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25 START-UPS TO LOOK FOR INVESTMENT

WHY PRESIDENT TRUMP WILL GET RE-ELECTED?

SPO REVIEW 22 CLOSING THE CYBERSECURITY SKILL GAP

IS THE FORTUNE OF IPHONE CONTRACT MANUFACTURERS GROWING?

LEAD STORY 24

EARTH DAY 2019 – HOW WILL CORPORATES CELEBRATE IT? COVER STORY 26

CSR HAS NOT TRANSLATED INTO REAL BENEFIT FOR THE POOR

TELECOM REVIEW 30

AS 5G ROLLOUTNEARS, THEDEBATE ONHEALTH EFFECTSBECOMES AMAJOR CONCERN

ROUND ABOUT 36

IT BEYOND GENERAL ELECTIONS

MOVEMENTS

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www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 3

Emerging start-up eco-system to drive the Indian economy in a few year from now In the digitalised world, cybercrime and digital threats are unfortunately an increasing challenge for many organisations and individuals. Data, algorithms, and all types of digital technology are today significant Intellectual Property and strategic assets. India is today a world-leading hub for advanced digital technology.

Many high-profile instances of hacking and loss of confidential information due to lost or stolen devices have revealed that security is either ignored or tacked on as an afterthought in tech development. Tech security and risk management should be a key priority for start-ups right from Day One. Companies like Symantec, McAfee and Quick Heal offer solutions for start-ups to secure their devices, data and online workspaces; similar approaches should be used by start-ups to secure their own offerings to customers.

There are also tough laws in each country about privacy of consumer data. Techies and their business heads should be clear about what kinds of customer data is being captured, what kinds of consent agreements are implied, how this data will be used, and who this data is being shared with. Techies should clearly trace and log all this data for the scrutiny of internal and external auditors.

The growing start-up eco-system in India brings a different challenge to the growth. India’s tech start-ups closed 2018 on a record high of $10.5 billion, securing several major deals to further cement the nation’s position on the world map. But despite an influx of money from international investors, the local ecosystem’s overall health has some concerned. The year saw a high-profile acquisition, the emergence of new unicorns, and more start-ups expanding their businesses internationally. These local players were joined by Silicon Valley companies hoping to turn India into their next big market.

Besides Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, which is aggressively funding start-ups in all corners of the globe, Indian start-ups also saw record funding from Chinese investors. Tencent invested in Swiggy and music service Gaana.com, while Alibaba gave capital to Paytm and Zomato, to name just a few examples. Overall, Chinese investors participated in 43 funding rounds by Indian tech start-ups last year, up from 29 in 2017 and 25 in 2016, according to Tracxn.

India’s regulators can take some of the blame for that. Early stage start-ups typically raise money from angel investors, but a current law in the country requires roughly a third of the money a start-up receives from an angel investor to be paid as tax.

The biggest challenge for start-ups is scaling. In US, few start-ups are going public than even five years ago and in France, there are only a handful of unicorns, even with its laser-focused efforts to foster and encourage entrepreneurship. We need to grow this (entrepreneurship) exponentially in countries because start-ups will drive job creation and economic growth in the future.

Start-ups and micro multinationals will be the drivers of growth and innovation in the digital age — using technology to challenge traditional business models — rather than the large Fortune 500 companies that exist today.

I predict that 40% of the big players won’t even exist 10 years from now. .

Deepak Kumar Sahu Publisher & Editor-in-Chief

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SPO NEWS

Workshop organized by the Indian School of Public Policy and conducted by Prof. Shreekant Gupta Public Policy is emerging as a dominant career choice for future decision makers, not only because of the career progression this domain has to offer, but also because of the growing demand for public policy professionals across various sectors - nonprofits, government, multilateral agencies, corporates, and others. An important domain in public policy pertains to the environment, especially since it is a burning topic in today’s time and age.

In light of the above, the ISPP organized a webinar on -Public Policy for the Environment: New Wine in Old bottles? - conducted by Prof. Shreekant Gupta, Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics and Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. The workshop was held on 27 April, 2019, and was attended by about 30 plus participants focussing on the past, present and future

Prof Shreekant Gupta

of environmental public policy.

Prof. Gupta, who is also the VicePresident of the Indian Society for Ecological Economics, and has served as the Director - National Institute of Urban Affairs, began the workshop with a synopsis of the environmental challenges India is facing, specifically covering water, air, soil, among others.

In subsequent stages, he talked about the existing legislations/standards in India, market approach towards environmental problems, environmental economics, and other interesting facts and figures that served as foo-for-thought.

Concluding the workshop, Prof.

Gupta mentioned, “Top-down regulatory approaches and judicial diktats have failed to reduce air and water pollution. It is time to consider market approaches such as pollution fees and emissions trading that are being used world over.”

“Encourage environment friendly modes of transport” – M. Venkaiah Naidu The Vice President of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu has called for the promotion of new and renewable energy in a big way.

He said moving to renewable would not just ensure energy security but also protect the climate, and reduce pollution.

“Adequate growth in renewable energy would serve dual purpose - firstly, it would contribute towards achieving energy security to the nation and it would address the environmental concerns, which need to be tackled on a war-footing,” he said.

Addressing a gathering after inaugurating the GRIDTECH 2019, an International Exhibition and Conference, organised by the Power Grid Corporation of India Limited to deliberate on new technologies in transformation, distribution, renewable integration, Smart Grid Communication, the Vice President asked experts to find out new technologies to harness renewable energy to fulfill India’s energy demands and also to fulfill India’s international commitment to de-carbonize the electricity generation.

Naidu also called for the promotion of clean and green mode of transport, such as Electrical Vehicles (EVs) on a large scale. He said that they have the potential to save foreign exchange on crude oil import apart from reducing carbon

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emissions. He also called for inclusion of renewable energy provisions right from the planning of towns.

Opining that rapid urbanization led to increased energy demand and rise of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, Naidu urged technologists to find new methods for tapping the huge potential in the renewable energy sector and also wanted them to educate the common man on the need to cut down GHG emissions.

Pointing that connectivity and electricity were key to development, Naidu stressed upon the need to address challenges such as pilferages in transmission and distribution.

He suggested developing a suitable transmission and distribution system to facilitate renewable integration.

“Smart grid technologies used by many countries would have the potential to solve the challenges,” he added.

The Vice President had earlier inaugurated the GRIDTECH 2019 exhibition, went around the stalls and interacted with the presenters at the stalls. He said he was happy to have met and interacted with students who were showcasing their innovative ideas to promote, use renewable energy.

Cyclonic Storm “FANI” to intensify into a severe cyclonic storm The cyclonic storm ‘FANI’ (pronounced as ‘FONI’) over southeast Bay of Bengal (BoB) & neighbourhood moved north-north-westwards during the past 24 hours and lay centred at 0830 hrs IST, on the 29th April 2019 near latitude 8.7°N and longitude 86.9°E over the same region about 620 km east of Trincomalee (Sri Lanka), 870 km east-southeast of Chennai (Tamil Nadu) and 1040 km southsoutheast of Machilipatnam (Andhra Pradesh).

It is very likely to intensify into a severe cyclonic storm during next 06 hours and into a very severe cyclonic storm during subsequent 24 hours. It is very likely to move north-westwards till 01st May evening and thereafter recurve northnorth-eastwards gradually.

Himalayan Heights Motorcycle expedition flagged off at Leh The 11 member Himalayan Heights Motorcycle Expedition team from Leh to Karakoram Pass successfully completed the arduous challenge. It was flagged in at Leh by Lt Gen YK Joshi, General Officer Commanding Fire and Fury Corps. The unprecedented expedition that began on 07 Apr 19 traversed over 1000 Km in the forbidding landscape of Eastern Ladakh, crossing the mighty Khardung La and Chang La passes on the Ladakh Range at altitudes over 17000 ft for 14 days.

The expedition team comprised of six motorcyclists from the Army Service Corps, a major logistics service of the Indian Army and five riders from Royal Enfield and Himalayan Motorsports Association. To their credit goes the historic landmark of riding to the Karakoram Pass on the Karakoram Range situated at an altitude of 18600 ft, where they reached on 16 Apr, 2019.

Speaking on the occasion at the Karakoram Pass, Lt Gen YK Joshi had complimented the spirited riders on their path breaking achievement.

Displaying extremely high levels of endurance, physical fitness and mental resilience, the riders have conquered the harsh, under developed terrain and extreme temperatures with their zeal, skill and motivation. The expedition team led by Maj

K Renuka includes Maj Bhupesh Rawat, Capt Akshay Joshi, Capt Jabez Philip, Capt Arpit Kapila, Capt Nikita A Nair, Sep Abhijit, Sep Shiv Singh, Sep Deewakar Mishra, Vijay Parmar, Aditya Malaker, Nihal Raheja, and Hema Choudhary.

In a tribute to the immortal tales of sacrifice during the Kargil War fought in Ladakh in 1999, the expedition mirrored the soldierly attributes of indomitable courage and the steely will to contest seemingly insurmountable odds. Riding from Leh over the Chang La Pass, the expedition travelled across Durbuk, Tangtse, Chongtash, Daulat Beg Oldie, Karakoram Pass, Khalsar and back over the Khardung La Pass.

While flagging in the expedition as part of celebrating 20 years of Kargil Vijay Diwas, Lt Gen YK Joshi felicitated the team members for their achievement. Recalling the valour exhibited by the nation’s Armed Forces during Operation Vijay, the GOC complimented the young Army riders of the Army Service Corps for their high levels of fitness and tenacity and lauded the members of Royal Enfield and Himalayan Motorsports Association for their contribution to ‘Remember, Rejoice and Renew’ the indomitable spirit of the Indian Army, the 20th Anniversary year of the Kargil Vijay Diwas.

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SPO NEWS

Low-carbon, green and climate resilient urban infrastructure is the need of the hour: M. Venkaiah Naidu The Vice President of India, M. VENKAIAH NAIDU has called upon town planners to make sustainable solutions such as harvesting solar energy, enhancing green cover and water conservation an essential part of town planning.

Naidu, while addressing the 4th Resilient Cities Asia-Pacific (RCAP) Congress 2019 organized by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). He asked municipal administrators to accord priority to tree plantation, solid waste management, protection and rejuvenation of water bodies.

Observing that a massive migration from rural to urban areas has become a reality, the Vice President said that education, entertainment, enhanced medical facilities and employment were the main drivers of such migration. He asked for collaborative efforts of governments at state and centre to reduce the divide by providing urban amenities in rural areas.

Opining that economic growth must take environmental protection into consideration, Naidu observed that dependency on fossil fuel must be reduced and new forms of energy sources such as solar must be explored. “It cannot be business as usual as far as development is concerned,� he added.

The Vice President called upon all the representatives of provinces and cities of various countries presented to adopt multi-dimensional and innovative approaches to ensure low emissions oriented development. He urged them to promote public transport in cities to reduce congestion and air pollution.

Observing that the green infrastructure was the need of the hour, he stressed the need to promote resource efficiency to achieve climate resilient urban development. Moving away from traditional metrics of measuring development, Naidu called for new urban infrastructure that was low-carbon, green and climate resilient. He also called for measures to ensure that urban solid waste is converted wealth by learning from the best practices followed globally.

Worldwide Aircraft Fairings market - a $3+ billion opportunity by 2026 The Global Aircraft Fairings market accounted for $1.48 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $3.07 billion by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 8.4%.

Rising demand for lightweight fairings, increasing defense budgets and growing number of aircraft deliveries are some of the factors driving the market growth. However, the high production cost and recyclability issue of composite materials are hindering the growth of the market.

Based on the material, composites segment commanded significant growth during the forecast period due to the benefits such as high strength-to-weight ratio, excellent corrosion resistance, high fatigue resistance, and lightweight.

By geography, Asia Pacific is anticipated to dominate the global market owing to rise in modernization programs, and increasing airport developments. Demand for commercial airplane remains high, particularly in the rapidly growing Asia Pacific region.

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Some of the key players in the Aircraft Fairings market include are Shinmaywa, FACC AG, Boeing, Strata Manufacturing, FDC Composites, Malibu Aerospace, Arnprior Aerospace Inc, Daher, AAR Corporation, Kaman Aerosystems, Nordam, Royal Engineered Composites, Airbus, CTRM Aero Composites, Avcorp, Mcfarlane Aviation, Fiber Dynamics, Inc., and Barnes Group.

SPO ANALYSIS

Gartner says marketers must focus on helping customers in order to remain competitive Big data and analytics allow marketers to know their target audience better than ever. However, in a world of information overload, marketers must focus campaigns on actually helping customers accomplish their objectives, according to Gartner, Inc.

on Helping Customers Gartner research on personalization shows more than half of customers report that they will unsubscribe from a company’s communications and 38% will stop doing business with a company if they find personalization efforts to be “creepy.”

Research findings on B2C and B2B marketing, brand and corporate communications revealed during the Gartner Marketing Symposium that the brands are best able to help customers either do something or feel something will win customer loyalty.

On the other hand, that same research reveals that messaging designed to provide valuable assistance or support, while using as few data dimensions as possible, delivers the greatest commercial benefit. In fact, messages focused on helping the customer accomplish something increases the predicted impact of the commercial benefit index (e.g., brand intent, purchase, repurchase and increased cart size) by nearly 20%.

“Connecting with customers in a valuable, relevant manner is as old as marketing itself. But we’ve seen a shift recently in how, exactly, customers want to connect with brands,” said Brent Adamson, distinguished vice president at Gartner.

“Customers find themselves lost in today’s world — sifting through overwhelming amounts of information, adjusting to rapidly changing technology, struggling with relentless economic fragility, among other polarizing issues. It’s no wonder customers are overwhelmed and worried about the decisions they are making. Because of this, they are now looking to brands for that reassurance and help in making the right decision.”

Gartner research shows that 44% of customers worry they have missed a better option every time they make a purchase.

To mitigate this feeling of uncertainty, brands must focus on building stronger relationships between customers and their brand by helping customers — understand their options, make a purchase, give them confidence and reassure their decision.

“Ultimately, we need to help customers build stronger, healthier, more productive relationships between themselves and their world,” added Adamson.

The theme of helping customers echoes throughout Gartner research, from every industry and across every marketing function over the last year — from personalization and content marketing, to improving the customer experience.

Personalization Efforts Must Focus

Customer Experience Efforts Must Help Reassure Customers The concept of helping customers also emerges in how brands improve the customer experience (CX). When looking at the CX investments most likely to positively impact customer loyalty and build long-term relationships — from improving service rep skills, to faster response times and website design — Gartner research finds that while customers will punish brands for underperformance, they are highly unlikely to reward brands for exceptional performance. Instead, when customers feel a sense of self-affirmation, they are more likely to reward the brand that generated that feeling.

Brand Initiatives Must Help Customers Feel Good

When looking at the potential value of a brand connection, Gartner research reveals that the common approach of “shared values” has little impact on brand connection for customers.

Instead, irrespective of what a brand believes, customers are three times more likely to feel a strong brand connection when they perceive that brand to deliver a range of personal benefits — how a brand helps them achieve their goals, present themselves to others or feel about themselves. Regardless of the investments in technology, data and analytics, marketers that don’t make helping customers an integral part of their overall strategy miss a massive opportunity to drive commercial outcomes and provide material help. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 9

SPO NEWS

Chile announces visa-free travel for Indians holding a valid US Visa The President of India, RAM NATH KOVIND, reached Santiago, Chile in the evening of March 30, 2019 - the final leg of his visit to three nations – Croatia, Bolivia and Chile.

On March 31, 2019, the President visited the Pablo Neruda Museum in Santiago. He gifted a special pen to the Museum made by the family whom Gandhiji encouraged to develop the first indigenous fountain pen in India.

On the same evening, the President addressed a gathering of Indian community and friends of India at a reception hosted by Anita Nayar, Ambassador of India to Chile. Speaking on the occasion, the President said that in “our quest for development and progress, the overseas Indian community is an invaluable partner”.

The President commenced his engagements by paying his respects at the Monumento Al Libertador General Bernardo O’ Higgins. Thereafter, he visited the ‘La Moneda’ Presidential Palace where he was received by Sebastian Pinera, the President of Chile and accorded a ceremonial welcome.

Subsequently, the President led the delegation-level talks between the two sides. Speaking on the occasion, he said that India and Chile trade relations are doing well. But the two countries can do much more. “Chile is the fifth largest trading partner of India in the Latin American region. Copper constitutes more than 85% of the imports from Chile. We must diversify our trade basket to further strengthen trade,” he said.

In a major boost to furthering bilateral ties, Chile announced that it will allow visa-free entry to Indian nationals holding a valid US Visa. The President welcomed Chile’s decision as a step that would promote both cultural and business ties.

The President also thanked Chile for its strong condemnation of the recent Pulwama Terror. The two countries agreed to work together to strengthen global response to defeat and destroy terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and hold those responsible, accountable for their brutality against humanity.

India also offered training slots to

Chilean armed forces in the premier defence institutions including for courses in mountain warfare and peacekeeping.

The two countries also agreed to explore opportunities for other cooperation in the defense field including jointly manufacturing defense equipment under the Make in India program.

Reliance Jio to lay off 5,000 workforce Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Jio to lay off thousands of its employees as a part of the company’s cost-cut measure and to improve operating margins, which witnessed a downfall in the January-March quarter. Jio has reduced the number of contracted employees, along with 10% of permanent staff, by 5000.

The pink slips to hand over to most employees are from departments including supply chain, HR, finance, administration and networks. The development has taken place also partly because of no growth in operating margins in the last two years. Currently, Jio has around 15000 10 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

20,000 employees on its payrolls. It also has a significant chunk of the workforce from third-party.

In the fourth quarter, Jio, despite posting a profitable quarter, witnessed average revenue per user (ARPU) going down to Rs 126.2 from Rs 131.7 in the previous quarter.

The company’s EBITDA went down 5 basis points on quarter to 39%, with total expenses rising almost 8% on quarter, primarily on the back of higher network operating costs, finance expenses, and depreciation. It is all happening because of the aggressive pricing stance offering customers data at a cheaper price range has led to impact operating margins.

Strategic experts and technocrats deliberate on "Mission Shakti" A special interaction session was organized by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to present first-hand account of the mission details, development milestones including technological aspects of Mission Shakti. Many eminent serving/ retired strategic experts, technocrats, diplomats, top brass of Armed forces, scientific fraternity across various departments participated in the deliberations.

DRDO presented the objectives, mission challenges and achievements of the Anti-Satellite Test (A-SAT). DRDO had successfully conducted an AntiSatellite Missile Test (A-SAT) ‘Mission Shakti’ from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island in Odisha on March 27, 2019

and made India join the select group of three nations (USA, Russia and China) possessing such capability.

National Security Advisor Ajit Doval; Principal Scientific Adviser, Govt of India, Prof. K Vijay Raghavan; Deputy National Security Advisers Pankaj Saran & Rajinder Khanna; Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy K. N. Vyas; Secretary – Dept of Science & Technology, Prof Ashutosh Sharma; Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Dr M. Rajeevan; strategic experts and think tank of India, former DRDO chiefs and retired service officers along with the Chairman of DRDO and Secretary - Department of Defence R&D, Dr G Satheesh Reddy were present during the event.

International Convention on World Homoeopathy Day A two day convention is being organised on 9 - 10th April 2019 by the Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy (CCRH), an autonomous research organisation - Ministry of AYUSH on the occasion of the World Homoeopathy Day (WHD) at Dr. Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi.

The World Homoeopathy Day is observed to commemorate the birth anniversary of the founder of Homoeopathy, Dr. Christian Fredrich Samuel Hahnemann.

The Convention will be graced by Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary of AYUSH; Roshan Jaggi, Joint Secretary, Ministry of AYUSH; Nilanjal Sanyal, Chairman, Board of Governors - Central Council of Homoeopathy and Tridandi Chinna Ramanuja Jeeyar Swamiji. Tributes will be paid by Dr. Gary Smyth, President - Faculty of Homeopathy, UK and Dr. Alok Pareek, President - LMHI (International).

With an aim to recognise exemplary work in Homoeopathy, AYUSH awards in fields relating to Homoeopathy for Life Time Achievement, Best Teacher, Young Scientist and Best Research paper will be conferred on this occasion.

On this WHD, 24 students will be awarded scholarships under the Short Term Studentship in Homoeopathy (STSH) and four students for ‘Quality MD Dissertation in Homoeopathy’. MoUs will be signed with two more PG Homoeopathic Colleges with an effort to link education with research. The vision behind the agreement would be to provide impetus to research infrastructure, which in turn further orient the students towards research. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 11

SPO ANALYSIS

A weapon that could change the game if India plays tough What is significant is Beijing’s restrained reaction to the Indian A-SAT test. The Chinese army finds that the tactical edge it had banked on, courtesy its constellation of LEO satellites transmitting real time data on Indian force disposition along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), is gone. It cannot rely on such satellites anymore to plan hostile moves in sectors once identified for weak Indian defences, or expect continued transmission by its LEO platforms once action is initiated by Chinese forces in the face of an active Indian A-SAT capability. With a blunted Chinese conventional superiority, and nuclear war headed Agni-V missiles and Arihant-class nuclear submarines holding the Hong Kong-Shanghai belt—China’s wealth producing region—hostage, Beijing may now be more open to formalizing the LAC as the international border.

General elections are often a prompt for Indian prime ministers to take strategic “big bang” decisions that they put off making during most of their time in office.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee could have followed up the 1998 series of nuclear tests by ordering the launch of an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), the design of which the Advanced Systems Laboratory, Hyderabad, had on its shelf for several years previously and was itching to test. It could have won the Bharatiya Janata Party a second term. Manmohan Singh could have derailed Narendra Modi’s ambitions in 2014 had he mustered the gumption to resume thermonuclear testing on the reasonable ground that the fusion device tested in the Shakti series of tests under a BJP dispensation had fizzled. Modi likely approved the testing of the anti-satellite (A-SAT) weapon, a capability former chiefs of the Defence Research and Development Organisation maintain was in suspended animation for almost a decade, as insurance against his re-election prospects trended in the wrong direction. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to blow up a satellite in space with a direct missile hit to follow up on the Balakot air strike as a way to burnish the Prime Minister’s tough guy image. But mark this: In each case, the decision was made or not made for extraneous reasons, and not to strategically advantage the country.

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But a test is a test, and deciding to green-signal it is the easy part. The more difficult thing to do, and where Indian prime ministers have tripped up, is to sustain the momentum of such tests/test-firings and similar seminal developments in the indigenous science and technology sphere, and then convert technology demonstration into military prowess. So, Jawaharlal Nehru, progenitor of the dual-use nuclear energy programme, suddenly got cold feet when it came to testing a nuclear device and weaponizing once the plutonium reprocessing unit in Trombay went on stream and began producing bomb-grade fissile material in 1964. Indira Gandhi approved the first nuclear test in 1974, and then, by barring further testing, brought the weapons programme to a shuddering halt, consigning India to strategic limbo for some 25 years. Not to be outdone, Vajpayee, despite knowing that the thermonuclear device tested in 1998 was a dud, announced a moratorium on underground testing.

The reason in each case was the same—strong external pressure, which is just another way of saying these prime ministers lacked the iron will to put national interest ahead of whatever puny rewards the external powers offered India for ceasing and desisting and otherwise remaining a subservient state. The question is, will Modi use the A-SAT success to obtain for India comprehensively capable and deployable anti-satellite missile forces able to take out enemy low earth orbit (LEO) satellites providing tactical military information and high earth orbit (HEO) satellites affording wide area strategic coverage, including spotting Indian missile launches?

The pressure will be on India to join one of two space treaties: The Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) tabled by Russia and China, or PAROS (Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space) proposed by the US. Because Indian political leadership, from the beginning, rather than shaping India into a disruptive force that elbows its way into international reckoning, à la Mao in China, prizes

membership in “exclusive” clubs (United Nations Security Council), technologydenial groups (Missile Technology Control Regime), and commercial and trade cartels (Nuclear Suppliers Group), all of which have victimized India, Modi or a successor PM may choose one or the other treaty stream.

In terms of a regime permitting greater latitude, the PPWT allows A-SAT; PAROS doesn’t. Moreover, the provision in PAROS of a “no-first placement initiative” in outer space is moot because the US, Russia and China are racing to put into space war-fighting platforms that are able to look down and shoot downwards and also shoot laterally using laser and kinetic kill weapons that are in their testing stage.

The Indian government surely doesn’t want to once again sacrifice its options by agreeing not to do things these big powers are doing. In the event a decision must be taken, staying aloof from those treaties and testing and finessing the capability will arm India with multiple leverages and do the most strategic good, including enhancing India’s credentials as “security provider” to a host of South-East Asian littoral and offshore states fearful of China.

What is significant is Beijing’s restrained reaction to the Indian A-SAT test. The Chinese army finds that the tactical edge it had banked on, courtesy its constellation of LEO satellites transmitting real time data on Indian force disposition along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), is gone. It cannot rely on such satellites anymore to plan hostile moves in sectors once identified for weak Indian defences, or expect continued transmission by its LEO platforms once action is initiated by Chinese forces in the face of an active Indian A-SAT capability.

With a blunted Chinese conventional superiority, and nuclear warheaded Agni-V missiles and Arihant-class nuclear submarines holding the Hong Kong-Shanghai belt—China’s wealth producing region—hostage, Beijing may now be more open to formalizing the LAC as the international border.

By Bharat Karnad (The author is India’s Foremost Conservative Strategist.

This piece first appeared on the author’s blog “Security Wise”.)

PM consoles the loss of lives in Gujarat

Instagram stories of users exposed to strangers due to a bug

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed his grief on the loss of lives due to unseasonal rains and storms in various parts of Gujarat.

After Facebook and WhatsApp, Instagram is accused to expose Stories of some users to complete strangers.

The complaint has been first received from a user, InternetRyan via Twitter, who was confused about seeing strangers in his Instagram Stories tray.

“Anguished by the loss of lives due to unseasonal rains and storms in various parts of Gujarat. My thoughts are with the bereaved families. Authorities are monitoring the situation very closely. All possible assistance is being given to those affected,” the PM said.

The Prime Minister has approved an ex- gratia of Rs. 2 lakh each from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund for the next of kin of those who have lost their lives due to unseasonal rain and storms in various parts of Gujarat.

The Prime Minister has also approved Rs. 50,000 each for those injured due to unseasonal rain and storms in parts of Gujarat.

It is confirmed from Instagram that the glitch that had affected "a small number of people" was real and has been resolved. If the user’s account is private, their Stories cannot be seen by people who don't follow them.

This was caused by a bug that has been resolved.

Out of Instagram's total global one billion followers, over 500 million users actively use the Stories feature and this incident, once again, raised major safety and privacy concerns among users.

www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 13

CORPORATE NEWS

Facebook, Instagram could be banned in the UK Facebook, Instagram and Twitter face “substantial” fines or a UK ban under a new law if they don’t act swiftly enough to remove content that encourages terrorism and child sexual exploitation and abuse.

The companies’ directors could also be held personally liable if illegal content is not taken down within a short and predetermined time-frame, the Home Office said. The exact level of fines will be examined during a 12 week consultation following the legislation’s launch. The spread of fake news and interference in elections will also be tackled.

The need for a new law over a voluntary code has been highlighted by the terrorist attack in New Zealand last month in which 50 Muslims were killed while footage was live-streamed online. In the UK, the case of 14-year-old Molly Russell has also focused minds. According to her father, the teenager killed herself in 2017 after viewing self-harm and suicide content online.

“Put simply, the tech companies have not done enough to protect their users and

stop this shocking content from appearing in the first place,” Home Secretary Sajid Javid said in a statement released by his office. “Our new proposals will protect UK citizens and ensure tech firms will no longer be able to ignore their responsibilities.”

companies have done to remove and block harmful content will be required and streaming sites aimed at children, such as YouTube Kids, will be required to block harmful content such as violent imagery or porn.

Search engines alongside online messaging services and file hosting sites will also come under the remit of a new regulator. Annual reports on what

The move comes after Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg called March 30 for “a more active role for governments and regulators.”

Staqu is helping police, Indian army to catch bad guys using AI Violence cost India a staggering $1.19 trillion in 2017 in terms of constant purchasing power parity (PPP), according to a report released by the Institute for Economics and Peace last year. Purchasing power parity is a theory of measuring economic variables in different countries so that exchange rate variations do not distort comparisons. Expenses related to preventing, containing and dealing with the consequences of violence, along with, expenses on military and security were included in the cost. That figure is equal to nine percent of India’s GDP (gross domestic product) for that year.

To address the issue of violence and curb its impact on the country’s economy, Gurugram-based Staqu has been working with police forces, and the Indian Army from across the country to mitigate crime. Staqu is using artificial intelligence to simplify the process of locating criminal suspects and correctly identifying them using a simple app. And then there are the spy glasses.

The company’s Co-founder and CEO, 29-year old Atul Rai is understandably reticent about the work they have been doing with the defence forces for the past one year.

14 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

“The only thing I can reveal is that the work we have been doing with the Indian Army is in the area of aerial imaging analysis and some other security aspects which are too sensitive to be revealed,” he said.

As far as working with the police is concerned, Staqu has so far teamed up with eight state police forces across the country, including Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Telangana to check and solve crimes using artificial intelligence (AI). Once the ongoing general elections conclude, Staqu will add two more state police forces to its portfolio of customers.

Overseas, Staqu has also worked with Dubai Police.

The glasses are fitted with cameras that can take photos of people around and run it past the criminal database. If it finds a match, it displays the information (name, criminal history etc.) through a projector fitted inside. “These glasses are particularly useful at a rally or a VIP event. They are also a great asset to have as part of the prime minister’s, and chief ministers’ security,” Atul points out.

Staqu has done a pilot project for this with the Punjab Police and with the Dubai Police.

FLIPKART launches 2nd data centre in HYDERABAD Flipkart, the country’s largest e-commerce entity has announced the launch of a data centre in Hyderabad, besides investment in the state (Telangana) to strengthen its technology infrastructure.

This is Flipkart's second data centre in the country, the first being in Mumbai. It says the new one (built in partnership with CtrlS) is part of one of the largest cloud deployments in the country, to strengthen its growing marketplace e-commerce business.

"In our growing e-commerce business, data centres play a critical role. We recognise the tremendous opportunity for sustained data-driven transformation in India and are pleased by the support we have received from the state government," said its chief corporate affairs officer, Rajneesh Kumar.

Flipkart had built its own data centre infrastructure much earlier, to store and manage the enormous data that gets generated from online sales, involving customers and sellers. It has developed its own technology tools, without having to depend on the cloud platforms of larger players like Microsoft or AWS for its data storage requirements or analytics.

Hyderabad is considered, after Mumbai, the most secure place for data storage and business continuity plans by many companies, which usually keep their data in separate locations to cope with any extreme eventuality. The BSE stock exchange's second data server, for instance, is also in Hyderabad.

Flipkart's technology prowess was publicly hailed last week by Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon (the US retailing giant bought majority control in Flipkart last year) during his visit to

the company's Bengaluru headquarters. Among other things, he had said Walmart would try to use some of Flipkart's superior technology tools across the former's facilities.

Flipkart refused to divulge details of the data centre, citing security requirements. The Hyderabad facility is expected to enhance the company's overall preparedness for large-scale operations, adding to the technology capabilities in its cloud platform software.

"Telangana was the first state to come out with a dedicated policy on data centres. To see such encouraging results come out is very satisfying for all of us. We welcome Flipkart and its team," said Jayesh Ranjan, the state government's principal secretary, information technology.

Facebook removes 687 pages, accounts linked to Congress, BJP ahead of polls Less than two weeks before India’s general elections, Facebook said that it has taken down over 1,100 pages, groups, and accounts from the platform as well as its unit Instagram in India, linked with India’s two largest political parties and Pakistan, as part of its larger attempt to stem the spread of misinformation.

In a blogpost by Nathaniel Gleicher, its head of cybersecurity policy, Facebook said it removed 103 pages, groups, and accounts on both Facebook and Instagram for engaging in coordinated ‘inauthentic behaviour’ as part of a network that originated in Pakistan.

Further, 687 Facebook pages and accounts linked to the main Opposition party, Indian National Congress (INC) and 15 Facebook pages, groups, and accounts linked to people associated with an Indian information technology firm Silver Touch, which has also developed

the Prime Minister’s NaMo app, were removed.

The analysis was carried out by Facebook’s in-house investigators, as well as think tank Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Gleicher told reporters in a call on Monday.

Social media campaigns hinge on inauthentic posts. In a separate blogpost, Kanishk Karan, research associate, and Ben Nimmo, Senior Fellow for information defense, DFRLab, detailed the content and misinformation behaviour on the entities that were taken down.

These included several large pages on Facebook and Instagram supported by the ruling BJP, and ‘several dozen’ smaller Facebook pages linked to Congress, it said. Pro-BJP pages called ‘The India Eye’ were removed from Facebook and Instagram. The Facebook page had over 2 million followers. According to DFRLab,

“the pro-BJP assets carried vitriolic posts against Opposition leaders and managed to garner high engagement, while the INC-linked assets pushed satirical posts, but garnered moderate engagement”.

The pro-Congress pages, the post said, were smaller and more focused on regional and sub-regional locations. The lower individual followings were compensated by a much higher number of pages. The content posted was more satirical in tone, it added. One of the highest followed pages — Jo Feku — had about 15,000 followers.

The Congress tweeted, “This is to clarify no official pages run by INC have been taken down. Additionally, all pages run by our verified volunteers are also unaffected. In the meantime, we are awaiting a response from Facebook to provide us a list of all pages/accounts that they have taken down.” www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 15

TOP 25 START UPS

25 Start-Ups to look for Investment SPO INDIA tries to understand how the smart start-ups are disrupting the industry with their innovative technologies and approaches. Various data points reflect on their performance matrices. It is absolutely a fact that the investors are bullish on Indian startups and are betting big on companies that have the ability to grow.The start-up ecosystem is to bring a trillion dollar opportunity.

The Indian start-up sector has already been ignited in the past five years with favourable policies around taxation, investments, ease of doing business, incubation, foreign capital, cross border, start-up lobby groups, and industry associations. The foundation of the ecosystem is already in place with India being the third largest hub for startups globally. India is witnessing a rapid rise in the B2B tech start-up landscape, focused on verticals like health-tech and fintech.

While Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR and Mumbai retained their position as the key start-up hubs in India, 20 per cent of the start-ups emerged from tier II/III cities.

intelligence etc.These start-ups have already created value of over $130 billion.

The Indian start-up ecosystem has really taken off and come into focus on its own— driven by factors such as massive funding, consolidation activities, evolving technology and a burgeoning domestic market. From e-commerce and fintech to logistics and consumer services, India is now home to 26 “unicorns” - $1+ billion valued startups that are cumulatively worth more than $73 billion and have raised $24 billion up to now.

Investment data also shows an increase in the risk appetite of investors, with a significant jump in the pace and number of deals this year. Investors are also showing interest into the sectors including ecommerce and emerging tech-focused companies, including automation, artificial

There are certain successful start-ups that are growing rapidly and changing how an existing industry works in the process

AZURE POWER Founder Name :

like Paytm, Redbus, InMobi, Housing.com, Zivame, AdPushup, to name a few. They have brought a revolution in the industry.

These start-ups in India have given rise to more start-ups.

The average valuation of an Indian start-up is $2.0 million as compared to $4.0 million of an American one. 45 percent of product/ digital organizations are focusing on the global market and 30 percent continue to be technology hotspots. With a 55 percent of B2C, 40 percent of B2B, and 5 percent of B2C/ B2B start-ups, this ecosystem has a lot of ground to cover in terms of securing funding.

ALTIGREEN PROPULSION LABS Founder Name :

Inderpreet Wadhwa

Amitabh Saran

Designation :

Designation :

CEO City :

Delhi GTM: A developer of utility scale solar power project in 2009, Azure Power produces and distributes solar power to commercial, government, and utility customers in India. Through value engineering, operational performance monitoring and efficient financial strategy, they have lowered the cost of energy.

16 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

CEO City :

Bengaluru GTM: Developer of a 48V hybrid solution, HyPixi, Altigreen Propulsion Labs makes electric powertrains for existing vehicles and custom solutions for OEM engine manufacturers. HyPixi can be retrofitted on to an existing vehicle, to convert it into a hybrid and provide a claimed 20-25% efficiency increase.

BIGBASKET

CARDEKHO

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Designation :

Designation :

Hari Menon

Amit Jain CEO

CEO

City :

City :

Gurugram

Bengaluru GTM: An online food and grocery store, Bigbasket has marked its presence in 26 cities in India.Servicing about 1 lakh orders per day, the e-retail major has 12 million registered customers across India.

GTM: With automotive content such as expert reviews, detailed specs and price comparisons as well as videos and pictures of all car brands and models available in India. CarDekho provides online sales, financing and insurance for autos and vehicles.

COMFORT PRODUCTS

EMOTIX

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Ashwin Shetty

Sneh Vaswani

Designation :

Designation :

City :

City :

Director

CEO

Mumbai

Mumbai GTM: A manufacturer of green products, which conserve energy and maximize output for human comfort, worldwide. Their flagship product SwiftChill, an appliance to chill beverages, cools a drink instantly without compromising on the quality to their relishable drinking temperatures.

GTM: An advanced robotics company focused at creating intelligent solutions.Their products leverage proprietary and state of the art artificial intelligence, robotics and internet of things. Their flagship product Miko 2 engages, educates and entertains kids.

ENDLESS ROBOTICS

CO-OFFIZ

Founder Name :

Srikar Reddy Designation :

Founder Name :

Prachi Jain Designation :

CEO

Co-founder

City :

City :

Hyderabad GTM: Builds intelligent robots to solve dull and dirty problems for construction, maintenance and smart city management.

They drive and integrate advances in robotics, computer vision, mechanism design and material sciences to build systems, products, solutions and services that revolutionize everyday life.

Delhi GTM: Strategically located in Preet Vihar (East Delhi), Netaji Subhash Place (North Delhi) and Janakpuri (West Delhi) CoOffiz offers fully furnished office spaces ideal for all young professionals, start-ups, freelancers and entrepreneurs of all types and sizes.

www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 17

TOP 25 START UPS GET MY PARKING

FLUX AUTO Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Pranav Manpuria

Rasik Pansare

Designation :

Designation :

City :

City :

CMO

CEO

Delhi

Bengaluru GTM: Flux Auto develops modular autonomous driving technology for trucks.The platform is built to be retrofit into new or in-use vehicles, and doesn’t use LiDARs, making it affordable for customers.

GTM: Provides Interoperable Smart Parking Platform connecting all parking and mobility stakeholders on a common platform. Get My Parking is launching- ‘Enable’, an IoT module that upgrades the old to the new. Packaged as a small black box, it retrofits existing parking equipment in a plug and play manner.

INSHORTS

INSTAMOJO

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Azhar Iqubal

Sampad Swain

Designation :

Designation :

City :

City :

CEO

CEO

New Delhi

Bengaluru

GTM: Provides app based news stories in 60 word bites for busy and uninspired readers. Formally called News in Shorts, the startup has managed to leverage technology to create a scalable content discovery platform.

GTM: Instamojo is an on-demand payments platform, on both web & mobile that allows individuals and small businesses to collect payments online by sharing a link with their audience.

The link can be shared through SMS, WhatsApp, email, and social channels or embedded on websites and blogs.

INSTASAFE

IXIGO

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Designation :

Designation :

Sandip Panda CEO City :

Bengaluru GTM: It offers cloud based Security-as-a-Service Solution.

It delivers comprehensive and uncompromising protection to mobile and remote workers, enabling them to safely and securely access enterprise apps, email, and web from anywhere on any network.

18 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

Aloke Bajpai CEO City :

Gurugram GTM: ixigo is a travel search marketplace. It aggregates and compares real-time travel information, prices & availability for flights, trains, buses, and hotel availability. Ixigo has expanded in India with the inauguration of a new product development center in Bengaluru.

LUCIDEUS

REDBUS.IN

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Saket Modi

Phanindra Sama

Designation :

Designation :

CEO

Co-founder

City :

City :

New Delhi

Bengaluru

GTM: Lucideus is known for its Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning backed Enterprise-Wide Cyber Risk Measurement and Mitigation platform called SAFE (Security Assessment Framework for an Enterprise).It has been responsible for the end-to-end security assessment of the BHIM Payments .

GTM: A bus ticketing company that sells tickets through online and offline stores. redBus is part of the online travel company MakeMyTrip Limited. Apart from India, redBus has a global presence with operations across Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Colombia and Peru.

SECLORE TECHNOLOGY

SHOPX

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Vishal Gupta

Amit Sharma

Designation :

Designation :

CEO City :

Gurugram

CEO City :

Bengaluru

GTM: It delivers solutions that ensure information remains secure and trackable. Recognized by Frost & Sullivan’s Growth Excellence award’, Seclore automates the protection of documents as they are downloaded, discovered, and shared to ensure rapid adoption with dozens of pre-built connectors.

GTM: ShopX is a Retail Operating system, where Brands, Retailers, and Consumers are connected. It offers a wide range of products in categories such as FMCG, mobile phones, accessories, digital services including mobile and DTH recharge, bus/flight booking, and utility bill payments.

SHUTTL

SKILLMATICS

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Amit Singh

Dhvanil Sheth

Designation :

Designation :

City :

City :

CEO

Gurugram GTM: Shuttl is an office commute service provider in India.

It’s a mobile-based minibus service aimed at making daily commute more convenient. Their vehicles are air-conditioned and operate with high frequency on fixed routes, freeing from the hassles of existing public transport options at a very economical price point.

CEO

Mumbai GTM: It is the developer of learning games for pre-school and primary school kids aged under 10. The team has developed a wide range of products filled with truly innovative content and highly engaging activities, all designed to be age appropriate, skill oriented and infinitely engaging for children.

www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 19

TOP 25 START UPS THINGSCLOUD

YEPME Founder Name :

Vivek Gaur

Amruth Puttappa

Designation :

Designation :

CEO City :

Gurugram GTM: Yepme is an online shopping platform. Specialized in the online retailing of men’s and women’s garments and accessories, the company has positioned itself as a fully-fledged private label fashion brand.

UNACADEMY Founder Name :

Gaurav Munjal Designation :

CEO City :

Bengaluru GTM: It is an educational technology company that offers online education in India. Being a free education initiative, the company believes in making high quality educational videos available for free for everyone. The educators consist of either students who have cleared various exams or mentors who have teaching experience.

URBANCLAP

CEO City :

Bengaluru GTM: ThingsCloud is a CleanTech - IoT company, who offers solar inverter solutions for residential energy systems. Their signature product, ThingsHiFi is a solar grid tie inverter connecting the traditional roof-top Solar PV and doubles as a Net-metering device that supplies power back to the grid on command.

The start-ups in India saw a 108 per cent growth in total funding, from USD two billion in 2017 to USD 4.2 billion this year, according to NASSCOM. More than 1,200 startups came up in 2018, including eight unicorns, taking the total number to 7,200 startups UNCANNY VISION SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD

Founder Name :

Founder Name :

Abhiraj Bhal

Ranjith Parakkal

Designation :

Designation :

CEO City :

New Delhi GTM: It is a managed marketplace for home services.Through the UrbanClap platform, consumers order services like beauty at home, appliance repairs, plumbers, carpenters, cleaners, home painting etc. Working closely with individual service professionals (ISPs), the company transforms them into micro-entrepreneurs.

20 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

Founder Name :

CEO City :

Bengaluru GTM: It is an AI-based Computer Vision startup focused on making cameras smarter with Real-time, Edge-based intelligence for a safer, secure & more efficient world. Their key products are Uncanny ANPR: High Accuracy Automatic Number Plate Recognition, Uncanny Surveillance - AI-based Real-Time Surveillance solution and Uncanny Vehicam: High Accuracy Vehicle Detection, Classification & Counting system.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Why President Trump will get Re-elected?

THE UNEMPLOYMENT NUMBERS CONTINUE TO BE TERRIFIC AND THE EMPLOYMENT INCREASED BY 223,000 IN MAY, WITH THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE DROPPING TO 3.8%, THE LOWEST IN 50 YEARS. THE WOMEN’S UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IS THE LOWEST IN MORE THAN 65 YEARS AND SOON WILL BE A RECORD NUMBER.THE LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE REMAINS STUBBORNLY LOW, AT 62.7% — APPROXIMATELY THE RATE IT HAS BEEN FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS In my recent visit to US, I was meeting various levels of Americans and Indo Americans on the performance of the Donald Trump’s presidency, which has been so widely derided in the national media that a casual observer might easily conclude his prospects for re-election are dim. However, that is not true what the American media’s saying. They give Trump a solid edge over any Democratic candidate in 2020. Trump is serious about the development agenda in US and has delivered most of things committed.

Hence, Trump will probably be reelected if he chooses to run. What follows is an explanation of why the odds favour Trump, and what eight years of his leadership would mean for global security. Let’s start with the factors favouring a second term, as per Forbes.

First, candidates who get elected to the presidency once tend to get re-elected if they run. Only two chief executives seeking re-election over the last 50 years—Carter and Bush 41—failed in their bid for a second term. Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama all won re-elections, even though at least two of them were highly controversial.

In fact, the most controversial presidents tend to roll up the biggest re-elections

victories.

Second, Trump has presided over the strongest economy in living memory.

Unemployment is at record lows, inflation is nearly non-existent, and new jobs are being created at a startling pace.

Anyone who studies presidential politics knows that strong economies are the most important factor driving support for the incumbent.

While growth may moderate between now and election day, few economists expect a recession anytime soon.

Trump is a masterful speaker when he campaigns; he has delivered on many of his promises to key constituencies, etc Third, the nation is at peace. Trump has avoided involvement in new overseas adventures, and is pressing to scale back what is left of the operations he inherited from his predecessor. Critics complain he is too eager to get out of places like Afghanistan and Syria; however the record shows that voters have little patience for foreign military intervention. Unpopular wars are the one issue that can eclipse a good economy in the minds of voters, but at the moment Trump seems to be delivering both peace and prosperity.

Fourth, Democrats are busy reminding voters in the middle of the political spectrum why they voted for Trump in 2016. Ever since the Democrats drifted away from their blue-collar base in the 1970s, winning the party’s presidential nomination has required appeals to the Left.

While many voters may resent the rich and want more government benefits, those sentiments become muted when the economy is strong.

Having given more voters a stake in the economic status quo, Trump can count on an electoral backlash against controversial measures advocated by Democratic presidential candidates in the primaries.

Fifth, polls showing weak approval of the president’s performance have lulled Democrats into thinking his defeat is nearly inevitable in 2020.

But Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were both unpopular during their first terms, and then went on to score landslide victories against opponents who made the incumbent look good.

Surveys indicating that a majority of voters aren’t inclined to vote for Trump again are misleading, because we don’t know who his Democratic rival will be in 2020. That will be a decisive factor drawing voters to the polls—as often as not because they are so eager to cast their ballots against a contender they detest.

www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 21

SPO REVIEW

Closing the CYBERSECURITY skill gap

Cybersecurity vendors tend to do a great job at delivering training programs that equip customers and partners with the knowledge and skills required to deploy and operate their own products. This is certainly critical as cybersecurity solutions become more sophisticated; however cybersecurity vendors who truly want to become trusted advisors for their customers need to adopt a training and education strategy with a much wider focus than their own products and solutions.

A comprehensive strategy needs to include training and education programs designed for: 22 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

• Teenagers and parents—both in school and at home • Technical colleges and universities implementing new cybersecurity programs or integrating cyber into more traditional IT and computer science courses • Security operations teams deploying company-wide awareness programs for employees • Customers implementing and managing cybersecurity products and solutions

• Professional services organizations providing services to assist customers • Academic institutions conducting research on advanced topics such as AI and its applicability to cybersecurity • Governments and NGOs tasked with establishing cyber policies and global initiatives • Recruitment programs targeting women, minorities, and highpotential candidates such as veterans transitioning back to civilian careers

Cybersecurity vendors have a responsibility for closing the cybersecurity skills gap that goes well beyond providing training on products and solutions.

As the cybersecurity skills gap continues to widen, it is creating what some now consider to be one of the top cybersecurity risks for many organizations. According to a recent workforce development survey, 59% of organizations have unfilled cybersecurity positions, with Frost & Sullivan forecasting a shortfall of 1.5 million by 2020.

This critical shortage in the cybersecurity workforce has resulted in security operations teams who are overworked and understaffed, which can often result in either neglecting to adhere to cybersecurity best practices, or careless errors in caring for network and security resources.

Although much of the energy in closing the cybersecurity skills gap is focused on technical skills to fill cybersecurity jobs, we need to be aware that the cybersecurity skills gap goes far beyond the job market for cybersecurity professionals. One of the biggest

cyber risks in today’s workplace is a general lack of awareness of even the most basic attacks, such as phishing emails and other social engineering techniques at all levels of an organization. It’s therefore important to understand that cybersecurity is everyone’s job, and organizations need training and education programs that address many different audiences.

Creating and executing a strategy with such a wide scope can be a daunting task, but this is precisely the mandate and strategy of the Fortinet Network Security Expert (NSE) Institute.

While the Institute’s flagship NSE Training and Certification program has issued over 200 thousand certifications for product training, it is equally focused on education programs such as the Fortinet Network Security Academy program for high schools, colleges and universities, the FortiVets program focused on retraining for military personnel transitioning into new careers, as well as free publicly available awareness training that can be accessed by any company wishing to deploy an internal cybersecurity awareness program for employees.

In addition to formal programs, a comprehensive training and education strategy must include strategic partnerships within government, academia, and NGOs. For cybersecurity vendors this provides a means for our subject matter experts to share their knowledge and vision with thought leaders and the next generation of cybersecurity experts. In summary the cybersecurity skills gap has become a much bigger issue than simply filling open job positions.

It has become an enterprise risk and a top priority for security operations. Effective strategies for closing the skills gap must focus on a wide range of audience needs.

As cybersecurity vendors, our role and responsibility in closing the cybersecurity skills gap goes well beyond providing training on products and solutions and entails becoming trusted advisors for our customers and for society as a whole.

Fortinet’s role and responsibility in closing the cybersecurity skills gap goes well beyond providing training on products and solutions and entails becoming trusted advisors for our customers and for society as a whole.

NASSCOM Foundation launches NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum with Mphasis NASSCOM Foundation, in partnership with Mphasis has announced the launch of the eleventh edition of the NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum (NSIF) – India’s largest platform to foster innovative use of technology to create sustained social impact. The program instituted since 2008, selects, honours and supports, innovative Information and Communications Technology (ICT) based projects, products and solutions that have the potential to address critical gaps in key developmental areas and contribute to inclusive growth.

Building on the solid foundation

from the last nine years’ triumphs and learnings, NSIF is inviting entries from a diverse mix of social innovators across NGOs For-Profits or non-profits and Social Enterprises. With support from American Express and Mphasis, NSIF will

award catalytic grants of INR 90 Lakhs to 9 of the strongest tech innovations that are creating radical social impact in areas of Financial Inclusion, Healthcare, Environment, Education and Accessibility.

The projects will also be provided with a 12-month Support to Scale Mentoring by experts in the industry as well as access to NASSCOM Foundation’s network of tech for good leaders in the country. In order to further drive CSR capital to encourage and scale innovations creating social impact, the forum will also support organisations working in other areas through the ‘Other Social Issues’ category. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 23

LEAD STORY

Earth Day 2019 – How will corporates celebrate it?

On Monday, April 22, 2019, corporations worldwide will encourage employees to celebrate Earth Day by participating in activities like neighbourhood or beach clean-ups, planting trees, or biking/walking to work.

While the one-day enthusiasm to care for our planet certainly helps, to make a real difference, companies have to incorporate sustainability into their everyday operations. Here are a few businesses that are making an impact beyond Earth Day -

Apple Inc. US-based Apple Inc., which boasts an "unwavering mission to change the world," has adopted several green initiatives to reduce its impact on Earth.

In 2017, to stop the over-mining of rare natural materials such as gold and tungsten used in its smartphones and computers, Apple made a commitment to obtain the rare metals through recycling older devices. The technology company is also looking at ways to make its devices 100 percent recycled. "We're moving toward a closed-loop supply chain. One day we'd like to be able to build new products with just recycled materials, including your old products," Apple said in its annual environment report. In 2018, the smart device maker announced that all its operations, spanning 43 countries, were being run using 100% renewable energy — either solar or wind.

Alibaba Group On this year's Earth Day, the Alibaba Group has taken up several initiatives to improve the planet over the past 12 months.

Alibaba’s Clean Water Source campaign Water is a precious natural resource.

One of Alibaba Foundation’s key funding aspects is water protection. The Foundation launched the “Clean Water Source Campaign” in 2012 to sponsor the 24 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

river conservation work of not-for-profit environmental organizations. In 2018, it sponsored more than 20 projects and the campaign is now covering 1,312 rivers in 389 cities across China.

Over the years, Alibaba Group has embraced sustainable development. The Group has been working with enterprises, partners and users to implement environmentally sustainable programs across various sectors. Here are updates of the Group’s other green initiatives, Environmental awareness of 35 million people The education program from Alibaba Foundation reached a total of 35 million members of the public in 2018. One of its highlights was the partnership in Wuhan.

The Foundation worked with various government organizations in the city to conduct nature education programs for 350,000 primary and secondary students in 150 schools. The curriculum combined online and offline, and outdoor activities, as well as green carnivals and was popular in schools.

Green Map reaching 700 million users

In 2018, The Center of Environmental Education of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, Alibaba Foundation and

Amap jointly launched the “Act Towards a Beautiful China” online platform. One of the features of the platform - Green Map - has reached 700 million users since activated on Amap. The Green Map leverages Amap’s location-based service to provide environmental information at the users’ fingertips.

Amap provides mapping, navigation and LBS to users is China and is the country’s leading map solution.

Smart logistics by Cainiao

Alibaba Group’s logistics arm, Cainiao, has already initiated a comprehensive program to improve material recycling, packaging, route planning and delivery methods to work toward a greener future.

Cainiao's unique packaging algorithm has helped to reduce sizes of 500 million parcels. More than 5,000 recycle stations have been established in 200 cities in China.

Planting 100 million trees

As of April 2019, Alipay Ant Forest, a green initiative by Alibaba’s related company Ant Financial, has 500 million users and planted 100 million real trees.

The total tree-planting area nearly reached 933 square kilometres.

Alipay Ant Forest promotes a greener lifestyle and encourages low-carbon

activities. Such behaviour is counted and converted into virtual “green energy” in the Alipay app and can be used to grow a virtual tree. With enough energy points, the virtual tree can be converted into a real tree and planted in the remote areas in China by Alipay Ant Forest and its philanthropy partners. Here’s a video explaining how it works.

with Pahal.”

TO THE NEW has adopted a comprehensive Social Impact policy outlining programmes for the betterment and welfare of the society. The foundation of the company is the core philosophy of building real-time societal values that form sustainable and inclusive growth for the company.

0.3% revenue for Philanthropy

Ingersoll Rand

In 2010, Alibaba announced it would set aside 0.3% of its annual revenue for philanthropy. The commitment is fundamental to Alibaba’s social responsibility initiatives. Building on them, the Alibaba Foundation was established in 2011.

TO THE NEW TO THE NEW, one of the fastest growing digital technology companies continues to drive its Social Impact mission with yet another Go-Green initiative under the aegis of Pahal – its CSR wing. The company is set to conduct a tree plantation drive on 27th April 2019 in association with Tender Heart, a nongovernmental organization working on the provisions of social & educational opportunities for underprivileged. TO THE NEW will be planting around 100+ trees in The Shriram Millennium School, Sector 135, Noida.

In a bid to align the company's values with the greater good, TO THE NEW takes Social impact initiatives every month envisioned to bring a positive change in human lives. The company has been taking a series of initiatives to contribute to the society & environment - from tree plantation and blood donation drives to necessary donations against natural disasters, the company is also helping underprivileged with rural educational initiatives and various other donation programmes.

Commenting on the same, Deepak Mittal, CEO, TO THE NEW said, “We are optimistic that everyone can make a difference through small yet impactful initiatives. With continuous efforts of our dedicated Social Impact wing- Pahal, we aim to build a strong community with safer and healthier lives for all. We encourage our team to invest their significant time & efforts towards building a better tomorrow

As part of Ingersoll Rand’s recognition of Earth Day 2019, employees of Ingersoll Rand India participated in a tree plantation activity across India to demonstrate their commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability. Ingersoll Rand employees in India joined their hands to plant trees with an aim to support the environmental movement and help reduce the impact of climate change.

Globally, Ingersoll Rand and its 49,000 employees throughout the week, committed to make changes towards a healthier and more sustainable world and encouraging others to do the same. At sites across the globe, Green Teams are leading earth-friendly efforts like reducing office supplies use, eliminating single-use plastics (straws and utensils), reducing or eliminating junk mail, removing trash bins at desks to encourage less paper, and using rechargeable batteries.

This year the theme at Ingersoll Rand is centered on ‘Small Changes that Make a Big Impact’. Through this campaign, employees are coming forward and volunteering to improve the environmental impact. Actions like using their own water bottles to stay hydrated, bringing their own canvas or synthetic reusable shopping bags, using cold water when washing clothes and shutting off lights or electronics when not needed to conserve energy and electricity.

“Sustainability is core to who we are and every day is considered Earth Day at Ingersoll Rand,” said Geetanjali Bhatia, Head, Corporate Communications & CSR, Ingersoll Rand in India. “We know that small environmental actions made consistently over a period of time, and when joined together as a group of 49,000, can make a considerable impact on our world.”

To further demonstrate how small changes can make big impacts, Ingersoll Rand is partnering with SolarBuddy to

donate and help assemble 3,000 lights that will be distributed to children in energy poverty regions throughout the year.

SolarBuddy provides access to electricity with a safe, reliable, effective, innovative solar light to use after dusk. The lights are specifically designed for children to use – easy to operate, carry and charge on their backs as they walk to and from school, which can sometimes be up to 10 kilometers. The lights will be shipped to Tanzania, Dominican Republic, India and South Africa.

SolarBuddy provides access to electricity with a safe, reliable, effective, innovative solar light to use after dusk.

Ingersoll Rand Climate Commitment In 2014, Ingersoll Rand made a Climate Commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its products and operations by 2020. The Ingersoll Rand Climate Commitment pledged to • Cut the refrigerant GHG footprint of its products by 50 percent by 2020 and incorporate lower GWP alternatives across its portfolio by 2030; • Invest $500 million in product-related research and development over the next five years to fund the long-term reduction of GHG emissions; and • Reduce company operationsrelated GHG emissions by 35 percent by 2020, a goal which the company has achieved two years ahead of schedule Since then, we have • Avoided 21 million metric tons of our customers’ CO2e, which is the equivalent of avoiding 3.7 coal-fired power plants.

• Reduced our own operational emissions by 45 percent, which achieved our Climate Commitment for operations two years early.

• Reduced energy intensity by 22 percent. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 25

COVER STORY

CSR has not translated into Real Benefit for the Poor After over four years of corporate social responsibility (CSR) becoming mandatory in India, there remains considerable gap between what had been the objective of this policy and what has been the outcome so far. The estimates of funds this regulation was expected to generate for the benefit of stakeholders— people affected or displaced when an enterprise was set up or expanded operations—have fallen from around Rs 40,000 crore to about Rs 14,000 crore, but nobody knows why the expected money is not coming in.

As per the Companies Act, 2013, a company with a net worth of Rs 500 crore or more, or a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs 5 crore or more in a fiscal year is required to spend 2 per cent of its average net profit in the preceding three years towards CSR. Various studies, including some by the government, mostly focus on the quantum of funds spent by corporates— in some cases, including information on how much is spent on various sectors like healthcare, education, skill development, environment protection, water and sanitation, etc. But the quality of work carried out by individual companies is still an unknown factor. Repeated attempts to get the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) to shed light on this failed to yield any results.

The last government data for 2016-17 reveals the number of companies failing to comply with the CSR regulation that rose from 9,018 in 2014-15 to 9,468, and the number of those spending less than the prescribed amount, from 5,073 to 5,954.

Though there are also 3,937 corporates that spent more than the expected amount as against 2,006 in 2014-15, the total CSR spend dipped from Rs 14,366 crore in 2015-16 to Rs 13,465 crore in 2016-17.

Development activist Behar states that data on CSR is too thin for us to 26 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

really understand how the funds are getting spent. “No one knows why some companies are being allowed to take credit of employees’ contribution through compulsory services as part of CSR obligations. Many companies are going farther, categorising their employees’ benefits as CSR obligations. In effect, there is continuing resistance and lack of clarity, real money has not flowed in, and there is no real compliance asked,” says Behar.

Often people mix up CSR activities with private foundations. Some of these trusts do wonderful philanthropic work, such as the Azim Premji Foundation, while others use it to pump out funds for their own family’s benefit, or it is not used effectively. CSRBOX, an affiliate of online development sector platform NGOBOX, states that the unspent CSR fund ranges between 9-12 per cent and 20-24 per cent of the prescribed CSR in FY2016 and FY2015, respectively. Overall, around Rs 50,000 crore has flowed into CSR activities so far.

Joy Sharma, founding partner of Impactify, an end-to-end digital solutions provider for organisations working in the social sector, says 20,000 companies are

eligible to fund CSR activities, but hardly 50 per cent of them report and allocate funds. Most of the bigger companies are adhering to the norms. “The kitty is expected to rise to Rs 20,000 crore if all are compliant,” says Sharma. According to nseinfobase.com, CSR spending by 1,080 NSE-listed companies as of March 2018, witnessed 11 per cent rise to Rs 10,030 crore in 2017-18 while CSR expenditure by these companies has shown a healthy compounded annual growth rate of 16 per cent over the past four years.

Pranav Haldea, managing director, Prime Database Group, which powers nseinfobase.com, says in a press statement that as in the previous year, education received the maximum spend, followed by healthcare. In fact, education and healthcare account for 60 per cent of CSR spend. Areas like reducing inequalities, national heritage, armed forces, sports, technology incubators and slum development saw negligible spends.

However, in comparison to the previous year, these areas did see the highest percentage increase in spends, according to Haldea.

The top 10 companies in terms of CSR spends in 2017-18, according to

the report, were Reliance, ONGC, TCS, HDFC Bank, IOC, Infosys, ITC, NTPC, Tata Steel and Wipro, which accounted for 36.06 per cent of the total spend.

Santhosh Jayaram, partner and head (sustainability and CSR advisory), KPMG in India, points out that some of the top companies were already undertaking CSR activities, but the regulation has forced everybody—big or small, listed or non-listed—to get on board. Resource allocation and spending for CSR has risen because of the regulation requiring 2 per cent of company profit being allocated for CSR initiatives. Now there are more controls from the governance perspective, which is a good thing. The regulation now requires approval at two levels. The CSR committee shortlists the projects and the spending, which is then approved by the company board.

“So, there is now a higher level of scrutiny, improving resource allocation and governance around CSR activities.

The social impact remains to be studied.

Social changes through CSR cannot be measured after just three years,” he adds.

Abhishek Humbad, founder of Goodera, a global CSR lifecycle and volunteering management platform that now offers impact study in India, points to a major flaw in the policy. “A few companies failed to spend the prescribed amount, but the law currently mandates only reporting, not spending,” says Humbad. Hence, as long as the companies provide a reason for non-spending or under-spending, they are breaking no law.

They provide a report of their budgets and project-wise disbursed amounts in the standard format of reporting provided by the MCA in section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013.

Companies follow schedule VII to this section for choosing the areas to invest their CSR funds. Generally, companies follow due diligence to identify their implementation partners, which are in line with the recommendations of the law. Among the listed companies, 27 per cent spent directly on CSR-related activities, 25 per cent used only external implementing agencies, while 38 per cent used a combination of the two, and the rest did not specify the route chosen by

them, according to nseinfobase.com.

Manpreet Singh Chadha, Wave Group vice-chairman and the Ponty Chadha Foundation managing trustee, says CSR is a way in which a company gives back to society, “to improve the well¬being of people in need and help them grow.” Chadha’s father established Mata Bhagwanti Chadha Niketan in 1999, a charitable school directly managed by the foundation. The school has been providing rehabilitation services to more than 1,000 special children and its initiatives have been acknowledged with the National Award 2018 for ‘Best institution working for the cause of persons with disabilities’.

Among public sector units, the Hyderabad-based National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is among those that had been engaging in CSR activities much before the concept was formally introduced. In fact, senior company officials claim their CSR programme is as old as the company.

Eradication of illiteracy, minimising child and maternal mortality, poverty alleviation and affordable healthcare in villages surrounding the project areas have been its primary focus. While NMDC denied facing any political or bureaucratic pressures on how CSR funds are utilised, several other companies, both from the public and the private sectors, admitted to facing such pressures. Some private companies admitted to facing tremendous pressure to undertake projects far from their area of operation, contrary to what the CSR regulation suggests.

Behar blames these pressures for the “escape route” provided by the government that allows corporates to put the CSR funds in the PM relief fund.

“Taking advantage of the confusion, some states like Gujarat announced plans of setting up an agency to handle CSR funds, defeating the very purpose of having corporates undertake CSR activities.

Chhattisgarh, in fact, actually identified projects where corporates could provide funds to fulfil their CSR obligations, helping to do what the government should have been doing instead, or to push its agenda,” says Behar.

There has been considerable political

push to garner CSR funds for government schemes such as Swachh Bharat and other flagship projects. In fact, PSUs were given the mandate to help meet government targets with their CSR funds. These are some instances where CSR objectives got defeated.

“As companies are not as yet mandated by the law to report the result of their CSR interventions, fund diversion is not noticed,” says Richa Bajpai of Goodera.

“Diverse motives push companies to undertake CSR programmes. The most important is compliance, which drives many companies to invest in CSR projects and report their progress in a structured manner. On the other hand, there are also companies that are self-motivated, see it as a business case and undertake CSR in an integrated manner, empowering the entire social sector ecosystem during the process.”

All these companies have a CSR policy and they declare their fund allocations and utilisation for CSR. Stressing the importance of CSR funds in meeting development goals, Ravi Subbiah, technical director (health) with CARE India, says, “There has been an increased interest among corporates in improving the health of people around its establishment. Those more evolved are supporting the government of India in achieving its Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) pertaining to reducing maternal and child mortalities, by investing in health programmes for populations that need focused interventions.”

Population Foundation of India executive director Poonam Muttreja feels the CSR policy offers incredible challenges and opportunities for ushering in social transformation. “There is an urgent need for inspiring corporates to move outside their -comfort zone of just delivering products and services. Why not utilise their inherent competencies to bring in a wave of efficient processes, innovation and technology application for the good of society? CSR can make a real difference by investing in tough and complex areas like adolescent sexual and reproductive rights, ending child marriage and addressing patriarchal norms,” she says. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 27

COVER STORY There are many noteworthy examples of CSR yielding results on the ground.

For example, Godrej has focused its interventions on skill-building and holistic development, with special focus on building the individual’s employability and earning potential. Besides working closely with various implementation partners to create robust training modules, they also collaborate with other companies through financial and non-financial partnerships, sharing knowledge, curriculum and funding. Similarly, L&T’s flagship ICD project began as a rural watershed project and was gradually scaled up to include health, education and skill development.

Their model is based on long-term sustainable development through a model of participatory communication.

There are many companies and implementing agencies that are putting their efforts into helping achieve SDG goals.

But, considering the inadequate and shrinking government spend on social development sectors, the efforts are few compared to the challenges.

Unfortunately, as a study by the National Foundation for India has revealed, for most of the smaller companies at least, CSR obligations are merely an accounting exercise. Barring a few exceptions, overall there is considerable disappointment about the quality of work undertaken. Despite the intent, then, CSR has not translated into real benefit for the poor and ordinary people of this country.

Indian firms' CSR spending needs more accountability and transparency Health and education have to be the most attractive sectors for companies to put in their money for CSR and sustainability.

Corporate India is investing well to meet its social goals, but the funds seem 28 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

misdirected. With the enforcement of the Companies Act in 2014, India became the first country to make corporate social responsibility, or CSR, mandatory.

The legislation stipulates that companies conscientiously contribute to society by integrating development programmes in their business models and culture. For this, firms with net worth of Rs 500 crore, or turnover of Rs 1,000 crore, or net profit of Rs 5 crore or more in a fiscal, must contribute 2 per cent of their profits to programmes that benefit society. Four years later, these big companies have spent much more on CSR than expected.

But are they actually engaging in social responsibility with commitment, or just finding convenient ways to be on the right side of the law?

Corporate India increased its prescribed amount for CSR expenditure from Rs 5,779.7 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 7,096.9 crore in 2017-18, states auditor KPMG’s 2018-19 report which analysed the CSR work of 100 companies. It found that companies were spending more than what was prescribed. From Rs 4,708 crore total expenditure on CSR in 2014-15, it increased to Rs 7,424 crore in 2017-18.

But the country’s most backward districts that require maximum CSR support remain deprived.

According to the Ministry of Rural Development, 115 of the 718 districts in India are backward. NITI Aayog stipulates that corporate handholding can ensure the development of these districts.

Jharkhand has 19 such districts, Bihar 13, Chhattisgarh 10 while Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh have eight each. But only one per cent of all CSR programmes have been implemented in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh each. Bihar has received just 2 per cent, Madhya Pradesh 3 per cent and Odisha 11 per cent.

Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, which account for only 15 per cent of the aspirational districts, have received 60 per cent of the CSR money. Twelve per cent of the districts in the Northeast require CSR attention, but just about 4 per cent received CSR money in 2017-18.

Companies say the Act is new and will take time to integrate CSR projects into their business models.

However, they have found convenient ways to wriggle out of their responsibility.

A large number of companies transfer CSR funds to government programmes such as Prime Minister’s Relief Fund and consider their responsibility over.

In 2016-17, the public sector Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum, Oil India and Indian Oil Corporation together contributed about Rs 146 crore as CSR towards the Rs 3,000-crore Statue of Unity, built in the memory of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in Gujarat. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has written to all district magistrates to use CSR funds to set up cow shelters.

Although schedule VII of CSR policy allows contributions to government schemes, such contributions contradict the principles of CSR. Instead of engaging with communities to uplift them, companies do a one-time chequesigning exercise. CSR policy stipulates that one-time activity cannot be considered responsible business. “CSR

funds should not be used as a source of funding government schemes,” states the Ministry of Corporate Affairs FAQs on CSR norms. At a time when the country eagerly awaits a robust policy, companies are not even complying with the present one.

Non-compliance by firms In July 2018, a good 272 companies were served notices by the Registrar of Companies for non-compliance with CSR expenditure. Between July 2016 and March 2017, as many as 1,018 companies, such as Adani Infrastructure and Developers, DLF Assets, and Vodafone India Services were issued notices for non-compliance. KPMG has identified three principal areas of noncompliance—disclosure of direct and overhead expenditure on projects, details of overhead expenses, and keeping these overhead expenses below 5 per cent of total CSR spends.

Poor understanding of the social needs of communities is assessed as the main reason for poor CSR compliance.

The problem is aggravated by inadequate infrastructure and implementation capability within organisations and lack of required expertise. “There is no data to know if companies are undertaking need-based assessment studies, a must since it prioritises the requirements of the impacted communities,” says Sujit Kumar Singh, senior programme manager at Delhi non-profit Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). Such an assessment should be inclusive and participatory on the lines of gender, caste and religion.

Often, professionals handling CSR are not trained to comprehend societal nuances. In most cases those heading the human resource department handle CSR activities. The need now is a policy which drives companies towards self-regulation, the key to CSR, Singh says.

Recognising that CSR is still nascent and a grey area, CSE has prepared reporting guidelines for companies. For this, it formed a committee representing media, civil society and industry.

According to the guidelines, companies should self-regulate and be responsive

to the disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalised sections of society. They should respect and promote human rights, make efforts to protect and restore the environment, and support inclusive growth and equitable development.

The guidelines show how to improve accountability and transparency in CSR spending, and make it an integral part of business.

CSR spend rose 9 pc to Rs 8,897 cr in FY17: Report A total of 1,522 BSE-listed companies spent Rs 8,897 crore, or 92 per cent of the budgeted Rs 9,680 crore on corporate social responsibility activities in 2016-17, an increase of about 9 per cent from the previous year, according to a report.

The Annual CSR Tracker compiled

by CII revealed that the number of BSElisted companies required to fulfil the mandate has also increased to 1,522 in FY17 from 1,270 in FY16 and 1,181 in FY15.

Under the Companies Act, 2013, certain class of profitable entities are required to shell out at least 2 per cent of their three-year annual average net profit towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

The survey suggests a substantial increase in CSR spends as against FY16 in the areas of environment and ecology (66 per cent), gender equality (115 per cent), national heritage (153 per cent) and sports development (192 per cent).

However, there was no CSR spend in the areas of technology incubation or slum development by a single public sector enterprise (PSE) in FY17. Moreover, slum development did not receive any funds from state-owned enterprises in the previous year either.

The overall increase in CSR spends in FY17 as compared to the previous year is 8.70 per cent. Development areas that show maximum increase in the CSR spends as against FY16 are sports development, national heritage, gender equality and environment

There was a noteworthy increase in the CSR spend with respect to armed forces veterans in FY17 amounting to Rs 33 crore in comparison to FY16, where less than Rs 1 crore was spent, according to the report.

However, 2016-17 registered a huge drop in the contribution made to the PM's Relief Fund as compared to the previous fiscal where 79 companies contributed Rs 80.55 crore while 120 companies contributed to Rs 107.43 crore in 2015.

This year, only 45 companies reported to have invested about Rs 23 crore. This is a positive indication towards the effort made by companies to introspect their nature of spends and comply with the CSR legislation, the report said regarding the decline in contribution made to the PM's Relief Fund.

"Alignment of business strategy is slowly but surely happening. Companies have begun to disclose impact data, which goes beyond the requirements of the legislation. This is an indicator of improved transparency though quality of data leaves much to be desired," CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said.

Across all three years FY15-17, the industrialised states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu remained favoured destinations for CSR investment.

It appears that over a span of three years, about 40 per cent of the companies preferred investing in one state/UT and about 4 per cent in more than 10 states/ UTs. Moreover, Northeast India received investment from 35 per cent of the PSEs and 65 per cent of the non-PSEs. Out of the 32 industry categories, the major contributors to CSR spends in all three financial years are oil and gas; software and services; utilities; and metals and mining.

As per the published report, there is big increases in CSR spends in FY17 in comparison to FY15 are reported in automobiles and auto components, construction materials, consumer durables, coal and other financial services, the report said. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 29

TELECOM REVIEW

As 5G rollout nears, the debate on health effects becomes a major concern Access to the fourth generation of wireless communication, or 4G, has had us hooked to our phones for a large part of the day. It’s our gateway to the news, entertainment and to commerce. But what’s coming next may change the way we interact with the internet forever. At transmission speeds of over 1 gigabit per second, 5G – the fifth generation of wireless communication – will be more than 20-times faster than 4G. At these speeds, the concept called internet of things – where one internetlinked device can send and receive data from another such device – would become more workable. But to enable data traffic at this rate, telecom companies will have to change the way they send data.

5G networks will use a frequency band separate from the already congested 4G networks. And instead of relying on lowfrequency radio waves like 4G and all its predecessors did, the 5G network is set to make use of high-frequency radio waves.

These would carry more data and enable faster transmission rates.

But there’s a catch.

The millimetre-long radio waves that 30 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

will do much of 5G’s bidding cannot travel over large distances. They will have to be intercepted and re-beamed after about every 500 metres. To do this, telecom companies plan to place several small antennas 500 metres apart, cramming them in close spatial quarters.

This could expose us to radiation from more sources than before.

No conclusive proof

Unlike X-rays and ultraviolet radiation, radio-wave exposure is nonionising. It doesn’t damage the DNA per se. However, some studies have shown that continuous exposure may cause small amounts of localised heating. Whether this could lead to more serious health effects is a question many researchers have asked – and the answers remain out of reach.

Unfortunately, less accurate and provocative media coverage of [nuanced studies] may excite raw emotions even as the perceived harm in this instance is more than the actual harm. Possible cancer induction by cell phone radiation concerns people. Anecdotal evidence and highly publicised litigations filed by persons claiming that cell phone radiation injured them fan the fire.

Few reports have shown a positive relationship between telephone use and cancer. However, there are as many studies that show no association between the two. “So far, the body of evidence is not large enough to say that the association is conclusive,” said Manya Prasad, a senior resident at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

In 2016, when Prasad and his colleagues reviewed the existing literature, they found that many studies giving a clean chit to radio wave exposure had received funding from telecom companies.

Beyond commenting on the robustness of the experiments themselves, this link makes the studies’ outcomes immediately suspect.

So does the absence of evidence mean evidence of absence? Usually not – but in healthcare, the attendant risks, including the risk of panic through misinformation and/or miscommunication, must be taken into account. As K.S. Parthasarathy, former secretary of the Atomic Energy Research Board, wrote in The Wire:

On the other hand, results from independent studies or those funded by the government pointed in a different direction, though not without having to field criticisms of being flawed in different ways. It appeared the claim that there was a small increase in the risk of cancer with telephone use or radio wave exposure was found to be somewhat statistically significant.

to map. In effect, both sides (excluding those who have sought to exploit this ambiguity for profit) have been able to point at studies and make certain claims, but neither side has conclusive proof yet.

In these, the tumours were also found located in the neighbourhood of areas that were more exposed to radio waves.

There is a recurring problem with establishing causality with rare tumours: because the rate at which they occur is so low, the data is of low quality by default.

For example, it took several decades to demonstrate the link between tobacco and lung cancer, another rare disease that takes many years to develop.

The skeptics remain unconvinced. One of their arguments is that if there was an association, there should have been a

In 2011, the International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC) categorised radio-wave magnetic fields as a possible

surge in the incidence of brain tumours, and that is not the case. According to Prasad, “The long latency period for cancer development can explained this trend.” It could take 10-11 years to more than 20 years for the effects of radio wave exposure to percolate and manifest as tumours, he added.

But more importantly, the way we interact with technology changes over time and there is no way to backtrack exposure rates and carry out a systematic analysis.

Brain cancers are also rare to begin with and that makes the associations difficult

IN REGULAR MOBILE PHONE USERS, THE STUDY FOUND THAT PHONE RADIATION EXPOSURE ACTUALLY DECREASED THE LIKELIHOOD OF TUMOURS, ALTHOUGH THIS ‘PROTECTIVE’ EFFECT MAY HAVE RESULTED FROM LIMITATIONS IN THE STUDY

carcinogen in humans. The IARC falls within the ambit of the World Health Organisation (WHO), and conducts research to establish if a given environmental agent can cause cancer. But the way it does that is by assessing if the agent is hazardous and not by assessing the risk. In other words, the IARC examines whether the agent is damaging, not what the amount of damage could be.

So at present, cell phone radiation is listed under category 2B. As Aju Mathew, an oncologist, wrote in The Wire earlier, “2B [substances] include agents for which there is insufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in animals and limited or inadequate evidence in humans.”

Two major studies This classification followed INTERPHONE, a large study organised by the WHO to look into the potential health risks of mobile phone use. It covered data from 13 countries and concluded in 2010 that making calls for more than half an hour a day for more than 10 years could increase users’ risk of developing brain cancer by as much as 40%.

However, scientists who participated in the study told CNN at the time that “there www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 31

TELECOM REVIEW is not enough evidence to show a causal connection, and the group of participants using their phones this much was relatively small.” The article further clarified that, “In regular mobile phone users, the study found that phone radiation exposure actually decreased the likelihood of tumours, although this ‘protective’ effect may have resulted from limitations in the study, the authors wrote.”

The single most comprehensive longterm study that investigated the radiationcancer link was undertaken by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP). In the NTP study, which released data in 2016, scientists exposed mice and rats to nine hours of radiation each day since before they were born until they were two years old.

3G and 4G radiation exposure in the context of health and may not be a good proxy for extrapolating the results to 5G. But to make matters difficult, all of the world’s major economies are racing to embrace 5G with little transparency over whether the attendant radiation levels pose any threats to any life form. Citing a lack of information, Céline Fremault, the environment minister of Belgium, halted a pilot project meant to provide high-speed internet in the Brussels area. “I cannot welcome such technology if the radiation standards, which must protect the citizen, are not respected, 5G or not,” Fremault told.

A small percentage of male rats exposed to radiation developed brain cancers (2-3%) and schwannomas in the heart (5-7%). However, these effects were found only at extremely high radiation doses – far in excess of the amount of radiation humans are exposed to through cell-phone use.

In a press release accompanying the study’s publication, Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, cautioned: Additional research will be needed to translate effects at these high doses to what might be expected at the much lower doses received by typical or even high-end cell phone users. Also, cell phone technology continues to evolve, and with each new generation, transmission strengths have declined and with it radio frequency exposures.

Indeed, the scientists had exposed the rodents to radio frequencies typically used for 2G and 3G communication, since these networks were prevalent in the US at the time.

Much of the latest research examines 32 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

India has one of the strictest standards for radiation exposure – about one-tenth of the levels deemed safe worldwide – but the question is if they will be maintained as it adopts 5G wireless communications. The Telecommunications Engineering Centre develops and sets the radiation exposure standards, but it has not spoken out about how stringent it will continue to be or whether it even plans to test the safety of 5G networks within the country before rollout.

Other potential effects Choosing to shift to 5G without prior research may have other repercussions as well, although they are supported by different levels of evidence.

Because radio-frequency electromagnetic fields can penetrate the body, they can dissipate their energy as heat. In this way, some have speculated that 5G could cause enhanced body-heating in insects. However, Arno Thielens, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Information Technology, Ghent University, Belgium, said, “I would not go as far as to say that this raises concerns.”

He is currently working on the first study of the effects of 5G exposure in insects.

Another concern is that 5G may interfere with weather forecasting.

With technology in place to shift to higher frequency radio waves, the US Federal Communications Commission has already begun auctioning licenses to operate at the 24 GHz frequency.

Weathermonitoring satellites use the same frequency to track the distribution of moisture in the atmosphere, using which scientists can predict the trajectory of a storm days in advance.

While there are other ways to measure moisture, removing satellite-based methods from the picture could drag the data precision down by 17%. Scientists from NASA discussed this at length at an American Meteorological Society meeting held this January.

In all, the debate over 5G’s pros and cons is far from over. Thielens suggested that, “as effects are demonstrated, network operators can choose to take them into account when they operate 5G” – and perhaps herein lies the rub. It is important that network operators and the regulatory agencies behind them are transparent about their decision-making factors as they implement 5G. If they are not – as is likely given past experiences, although the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has issued public advisories and information papers – it would be imperative to keep profit-mongers and sensationalists from swooping in for a self-injurious kill.

CORPORATE NEWS

Schneider Electric brings in energy efficiency for a greener future Energy consumption and CO2 emissions will continue to increase over the coming decades. Schneider Electric leverages technological innovation to use less energy, and to use the energy that we do consume more intelligently. Hence, Schneider Electric is reaching for goals at the company and the consumers end.

The 2018-2020 – Schneider Sustainability Impact report states that 120 million metric tons avoided CO2 on the customers’ end through the company’s offerings. In addition to these initiatives, the Schneider Electric Foundation is Maskbook’s main partner. Launched in 2015 by Art of Change 21, Maskbook is an international art project raising awareness on the increasingly high stakes of air pollution and climate change.

In 2015, the company unveiled 10 sustainability commitments. The goal of these pledges is to ensure that Schneider Electric’s entire ecosystem — from the company’s operations to those of our suppliers, customers, and partners — becomes carbon neutral by 2030.

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With this in mind, the company has renewed and strengthened the 10 sustainability commitments Avoid the emission of 100 million metric tons of CO2on our customers’ end, thanks to our offers (2018 – 2020) Use 80% renewable electricity by 2020 and 100% by 2030; and continue to drive energy efficiency toward doubling our energy productivity in our sites over 2005 – 2030 period.

Achieve 75% of our turnover under the new Green Premium™ program (2018 – 2020) Avoid 100,000 metric tons of primary resource consumption through ECOFIT, product recycling, and take-back programs (2018 – 2020) Use 100% cardboard and pallets for transport packing from recycled or certified sources by 2020 (Q4) Reach 200 sites labelled Toward Zero Waste to Landfill by 2020 (2015 – 2020) and recover 100% of our industrial waste by 2030 (2015 – 2030) Reduce CO2 emissions from the transport of our goods by 3.5% per year (annually since 2012) Facilitate access to lighting and communication with low-carbon solutions for 50 million underprivileged people by 2025 (2009 – 2025) Propose alternatives to the use of SF6 gas by 2020 (2015 – 2020) and eliminate SF6 from our products by 2025 (2015 – 2025) Invest €10 billion in innovation and R&D for sustainability in 10 years (2015 – 2025)

HCL Tech touches 3rd position in Top IT firms in India HCL Technologies overtook Bengaluru-based Wipro to become the third-largest Indian IT services company, reporting the fastest pace of revenue growth in fiscal 2019 among the industry top five on a slew of acquisitions.

HCL Tech’s revenue grew 11.8 per cent to $8.63 billion in the just-concluded financial year as businesses from clients as well as from acquisitions increased. Wipro, which has been undergoing restructuring of underperforming businesses for several years, had reported revenue of $8.12 billion during the same period for its IT services business. HCL Posts $364-m Profit in Q4.

Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Tech said it expects revenues to grow 14-16 per cent in constant currency (CC) terms this financial year, which will help it touch the $10-billion revenue mark. Its organic business is expected to contribute 7-9 percentage points

to revenue growth, while acquisitions — which include the software products it bought from IBM — may contribute about 7 percentage points.

HCL Tech won 17 deals in the fourth quarter, a mix of core and next generation services. These deals were led by verticals such as retail and consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, public services and financial services, it said. Total employee count stood at 137,965 at the end of March. The company added 5,637 people in the fourth quarter. www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 33

SPO REVIEW

Is the fortune of iPhone contract manufacturers growing?

In 2018, Apple spent $60 billion with 9,000 American component suppliers and companies, an increase of more than 10 percent from the year before, supporting more than 4,50,000 jobs.

The touch sensitive glass for iPhone and iPad is made by Corning at a 65-yearold facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

Cincinnati Test Systems in Ohio designed a first-of-its-kind equipment to ensure iPhone is water resistant. And Broadcom in Fort Collins, Colorado, Qorvo in Hillsboro, Oregon and Skyworks in Woburn, Massachusetts, are all making wireless communication hardware that enables global connectivity.

Apple already has its budget-friendly iPhone SE model produced in India by manufacturing partner Wistron. Foxconn, according to this and other reports, could move production of the higher-end iPhones, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, to India, as per the report.

Apple’s contract manufacturers are suing Qualcomm similarly, for charging too much for its IP. Qualcomm is suing Apple’s contract manufacturers for withholding payments for the use of its IP. Qualcomm is suing Apple for alleged tortuous interference between Qualcomm and the contract manufacturers.

The legal battle among Apple and Qualcomm has come to an end and both have announced that they have dropped all their legal cases and signed a settlement agreement; Apple has also agreed to pay some amount to Qualcomm. However, the payment amount is not revealed - by neither of the companies. Qualcomm expressed that the payment amount would help its earnings per share may increase by $2.

The companies have said that, besides dropping all litigation cases, they also have signed a multi-year contract to continue business with each other. The companies also have reached a six-year license agreement, effective as of April 1, 2019, including a two-year option to extend, and a multiyear chipset supply agreement.

This means Apple will, once again, buy chipsets from the San Diego-based chipset maker. This development could spell bad news for Intel.

There are various contract 34 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

manufactures who are worth billions of US$.

Foxconn clocking the revenue of $152B Foxconn, the Taiwan-based ODM, is the world’s biggest provider of electronics manufacturing, employing 250,000 worldwide (as of 2018), with manufacturing sites in Taipei, Suzhou, Mexico City, Madrid, Cleveland, and more.

Most of its manufacturing is done in China.

Wistron with a revenue of $29B Wistron is a Taiwan-based manufacturer of computer and consumer electronics products. Wistron got its start as the manufacturing branch of Acer. Its lines of business include notebook and desktop PCs, server and storage systems, handheld devices, and various networking and communication products, but it’s best known as one of the world’s largest manufacturer of notebook computers.

Wistron is a publicly traded company that, as of 2018, employs 83,000 people worldwide, in manufacturing and support centers across China, Malaysia, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and the United States.

Pegatron at revenue of $44B

Another contract manufacturing company from Taiwan, Pegatron began its journey as the production arm of ASUSTek Computer (also known as ASUS), spinning off in 2008. Pegatron manufactures the desktop and notebook PCs, wireless systems, motherboards, game consoles, smartphones, and TVs, and boasts both Apple and HP as its biggest customers. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 5c were both manufactured by Pegatron.

Compal at $32B revenue The fourth company again from Taiwan, Compal employs roughly 64,000 people. It was founded in 1984 and is known primarily for manufacturing notebooks, mobile devices, connected devices, liquid crystal displays, and health care products. Compal is responsible for the manufacturing of many products you may have used at some point-Amazon Alexa, Dell and Lenovo PCs, Apple iPads, HTC, and Sony smartphones.

All four contract manufacturing companies and all top 4 iPhone smartphone ODMs are very large and sophisticated companies, driving $260B in revenue, are based in Taiwan, do most of their manufacturing in China, employing half a million people. Inputs are taken from -Forbes.

www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 35

ROUND ABOUT

IT Beyond General Elections In less than two months’ time, a lot will happen in Indian political landscape.

Foremost is the new government, which will assume office, no matter which party or coalition forms the government.

If the government led by the present alliance comes to power, one can expect continuation of the same policies.

Perhaps, there may be change in the focus or priorities based on vast experiences that they had accumulated over the last five years or so. If on the other hand, a different party or coalition comes to power, will there be any change in the approach regarding policies towards information technology?

My guess is that there will not be. The reason is not far to seek. Our commitment and focus towards IT are irreversible. No one can put the pendulum back. Every political party can take credit for pushing information technology to the center stage. Not only that, everyone is taking advantage of IT to promote their cause, interests, candidates and to galvanize their manifesto so much so that the election watchdog in India has come with a set of do’s and don’ts for political parties. It has instructed the internet companies like Facebook, Goggle, WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram to be circumspect about the trolls and other messages that are frequently forwarded. Some of them have installed filters to weed out such messages.

Some political parties are using Predictive Analytics to predict and target potential voters. As the election process is gaining ground and still there is more than one month for the process to reach its logical end, one can expect not only war in the cyber media but also massive cleaning up operations by the internet providers.

Let me go back to the main theme: what will be the prospects of IT under various dispensations. My analysis is just only illustrative and I do not venture to go for an apocalyptical prediction. For analytical sake, I am, presuming three scenarios.

One, the existing government comes back into power with various configurations of 36 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

alliances and support base. In that case, one can hear more about Digital India, Smart India, internet India and things like that. One can vouch that in the last five years or so, a lot has been done about connecting people digitally. Admittedly, a lot of financial transactions are taking place through the cashless medium.

Not only that, cashless transactions are happening in tier 2 and 3 cities, which were earlier confined to metros only a few years back. Net penetration is increasing thanks to more awareness of the people coupled with the efforts of the government to create a strong digital infrastructure. It is a fact that mobile phones, which were imported in large numbers some two years back, are now being made in India thanks to the Make in India program initiated by the government. For the first time in India, the electronic goods imports have recorded less than the domestic production. It is a major achievement.

More so, it can bode well for India since it is committed to take electronics sector in the same league as the software sector.

There are a few other areas also that need mention, which the present government can list as their achievement.

Now, let me turn to the second possibility: a government formed by the main opposition party -Congress on their own or with post election allies. Some people believe that it was during the successive Congress–led governments, IT had received the type of priority it deserved.

In 1980s, Rajiv Gandhi had confronted stiff opposition, when he introduced computers in India. Yet, he managed to do so through sheer determination and I would say pragmatism.

What I am trying to drive home is that there is meeting of minds as far as the BJP and Congress are concerned on the digital domain. Rather, I would say their polices in many counts are similar, though apparently, they try to make people realize they are different.

If a BJP led government is voted

into power, can they shy away from the universal income program promised by the Congress on the ground that it would lead to fiscal profligacy? They cannot do so. They have to match the promises made by the Congress, if not improve upon that.

I feel that India will continue to enjoy a conducive environment for the growth of the IT industry and no government in power will tweak the policies to give less importance to IT. Secondly, IT landscape has changed much in the recent years with the induction of artificial intelligence and robotics. Yet, we are late in realizing this global change. That has affected our offshore contracts and business outsourcing markets. Many jobs, which were earlier carried out by man is replaced by machine, through Internet of Things (IOTs). Our capabilities in these disciplines are mostly to be seen in papers than on the ground.

Now experts are debating who would unleash first 5G-whether China or US. Available statistics indicate that Huwaei of China may pipe Qualcomm in the bargain. I have always maintained that I am an incorrigible optimist. Setbacks and hiccups, I treat as part of the game.

India has the strength to build on the IT power. Despite our shortcomings in a few areas, we have the potential to overcome the hurdles to touch newer heights in IT. We should accept and absorb the best technologies. n

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MOVEMENTS Air Marshal D Choudhury AVSM VM VSM takes over as SASO Hq WAC Air Mshl D Choudhury AVSM VM VSM has taken over as Senior Air Staff Officer, Western Air Command. The Air Officer is a Fighter Combat Leader and an Instrument Rating Instructor and Examiner. He is an alumnus of Royal College of Defence Studies UK, a Post Graduate in Strategy and International Security from King's College London and Master of Philosophy on Defence and Strategic Studies.

Shrikant Walgad takes over as the CVO in BEL Shrikant Walgad, an IAS officer of the Haryana Cadre, has taken charge as the Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) of Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).

Shrikant Walgad completed his BE in Electronics & Communications from the Karnataka Regional Engineering College (now NITK Surathkal), Mangalore University, in 1986. He also holds a Post Graduate Degree in Public Policy and Management (PGPPM) from IIM-Bangalore.

Rajendra Kumar Nayak takes over as Controller General of Defence Accounts Rajendra Kumar Nayak has taken over as the 52nd Controller General of Defence Accounts on April 22, 2019. He is from the Indian Defence Accounts Service of 1983 batch.During the career span of more than 35 years, Nayak has held important assignments in the Defence Accounts Department and on deputation in the Government of India. He has vast and varied experience in handling Finance, Personnel, Pay & Budget matters of Ministry of Defence.

He was Additional Controller General of Defence Accounts, Defence 38 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

Accounts Department, Ministry of Defence before taking over as the CGDA.

SC Mudgerikar selected as CMD,Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd The public-sector headhunter (PESB selected Shriniwas Chandrashekhar Mudgerikar for the post of Chairman and Managing Director, Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd. Mudgerikar is Director(M&CP), Central Warehousing Corporation.

Shriniwas Chandrashekhar Mudgerikar is presently working as Director (M & CP), Central Warehousing Corporation since Feb 2016. He is an IRTS Officer of 1990 batch and possess 28 years of experience in logistic and support system.

Shiv Das Meena appointed as NBCC CMD Additional Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India, Shiv Das Meena assumed office as Chairman-cumManaging Director (CMD) of Navratna CPSE, NBCC (India) Ltd., with effect from April 5, 2019.

Meena, the 1989-Batch IAS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre has taken over the office from Dr Anoop Kumar Mittal, the outgoing CMD, who had served the organisation for 34 years.Earlier, Meena has served as Joint Secretary, MoHUA and Ministry of Urban Development; Principal Secretary Public &Rehabilitation Department, Tamil Nadu Government and Principal Secretary to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister among others.

CS Rajan named Managing Director of IL&FS

Former Rajasthan Chief Secretary CS Rajan, who is a Director on the IL&FS board, has been appointed as the group’s Managing Director. He has taken over the position from Vineet Nayyar of IL&FS, who continues to serve as the group’s Executive Vice President.

In a presentation, the company said that it expects to complete monetisation of its assets by May as the company is in good shape and its assets can be sold.

IL&FS group's total outstanding debt currently stands at Rs. 99,354 crore, said N Sivaraman, the chief operating officer.

P M Prasad appointed as CMD - Bharat Coking Coal Ltd PESB has recommended Polavarapu Mallikharjuna Prasad, the name for the post of Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. P M Prasad joined CIL in August 1984 after graduating in BE (Mining) from Osmania University in the year 1984 and since then performed his duties at Western Coalfields Limited and Mahanadi Coalfields Limited in various capacities ranging from Executive Trainee to General Manager up to April 2015.

Devendra Kumar Tiwari appointed as the new chief secretary of Jharkhand Devendra Kumar Tiwari, a 1986-batch IAS officer has been appointed as the new chief secretary of Jharkhand. Currently, he holds the post of development commissioner and succeeds Sudhir Tripathi.

Additional Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh, presently with the Planning-cumFinance department, has been appointed the new Development Commissioner, the notification said.

www.spoindia.org April 2019 | 39

RNI No.: DELENG/2016/69058 Printing Date 27 & 28

40 | April 2019 www.spoindia.org

Reg. No.: DL-SW-1/4197/17-19

40 pages including cover

Date of Posting Date 29 & 30 Every Month