SPO January 2019 Issue

www.spoindia.org Vol. III | Issue 08 | January 2019 | Rs. 50

www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 1

2 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

EVENTS | 20 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

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OITF 2019 HIGHLIGHTS THE GROWTH AREAS THAT IS TRANSFORMING THE STATE

Mumbai: Bureau office Regional Manager (West): Anil Kumar Anurag Residency, 203 - “B” Wing, Plot No-5, Sector-9, Kamothe, Navi Mumbai - 410 209 Tel: 022-65561292, Mobile: 08108017479

NEWS 6 - 13

Chennai: Bureau office

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INTERNATIONAL EVENT

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

TOP GLOBAL LEADERS CONVERGE AT DAVOS, CALL FOR RULES ON TECHNOLOGY MANDATE

Hyderabad: Bureau office Branch Manager: Sunil Kumar 32-161/3, 202 Neha Paradise, Nr. Maissamma Temple, Venketeswara colony, Ramakrishna Puram Hyderabad - 500056, Telangana, Tel: 040-32989844/ Cell No. 08100298033

Kolkata: Bureau office Marketing Officer: Kiran Kumar 67 Sarada Park, Garia, Kolkata - 700 084 Mobile: 09903088480 Printed by Deepak Kumar Sahu and Published by Deepak Kumar Sahu on behalf of Deepak Kumar Sahu and Printed at Pushpak Press Pvt. Ltd. Shed No. 203 - 204, DSIDC Complex, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110 020 and Published at A-84A/3 Rose Apartment, Paryavaran complex, IGNOU Road, New Delhi - 110 030 Editor - Deepak Kumar Sahu

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BUDGET 2019

INTERIM BUDGET 2019 - LET'S NOT GET TOO EXCITED

20 EVENTS

TECH TREND 2019

WHAT IS IN STORE FOR THE INDIAN TECH INDUSTRY IN 2019?

34

COVER STORY

GOVERNMENT WELFARE SCHEMES

TO VOTE FOR MERIT IN COMING GENERAL ELECTIONS 37

24

BUDGET 2019

WHAT IS IN THE INDUSTRY’S BUDGET

38 MOVEMENTS

All payments favouring:

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OITF 2019 HIGHLIGHTS THE GROWTH AREAS THAT IS TRANSFORMING THE STATE

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ROUND ABOUT GEORGE ORWELL, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MY PREDILECTIONS!

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The Science of ‘Giving Discounts’ seems to be failing in India With the new e-commerce policy coming into effect from February 1, Amazon and Walmart’s have together lost $50 Bn in market capitalisation. Also, the e-tailers are now required to remove 25% of the products from their platform in wake of the amendment of the new rules.

For Flipkart, a major impact has been observed on its high-selling electronics category. Walmart, however, has shown optimism for the Indian market given the opportunity present in the ecommerce segment. Now, the e-commerce majors have found the alternative routes for creating more subsidiaries to continue with their current business without violating the new rules.

Several sellers and re-sellers have complained about the practices adopted by E-Commerce giants like Amazon, Flipkart and the government has finally defended its decision to rework the rules for the marketplace model, accusing the country’s top e-traders of operating “hybrid” marketplaces, which were anchored by inventory-based operations through a network of controlled sellers. Both Flipkart and Amazon involved various intermediaries and group entities in the chain to divide these discounts and spread losses, which impact the domestic retail sector.

With this Indian retail has faced a loss of about $100 Billion with the entry of the e-commerce companies in India. Retailing in India is one of the pillars of its economy and accounts for about 10 percent of its GDP. The Indian retail market is estimated to be US$ 600 billion and one of the top five retail markets in the world by economic value.

Another question that arises here is: Can Walmart exit Flipkart? Well, in November 2017, amid tightening regulation over online data, Amazon had to sell off the hardware from its public cloud business in China. If the similar sell-off happens between Walmart-Flipkart, this will certainly trigger the permanent roll off of Walmart from the Indian market.

Just days after the acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart was announced, it faced a severe backlash from small traders in India, with a strong believe on the threat to their businesses. Several industry associations, including the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), FAITA that represents over 70 million small traders had complained about the practices adopted by e-traders filed an anti-trust petition with the Competition Commission of India (CCI), Finance Ministry and MeitY over the deal.

Swadeshi Jagran Manch wrote several notes to the PMO (Prime Minister’s office) on it and this has prompted the government to step in.

Going forward, technology has taken over our generation and quite frankly, social networking is the newest and upcoming epidemic throughout our society. Social media has had such a huge impact on society and the fact on social media has literally shaped the world into the way it is today and the way people rely so much on technology is insane.

The new regulations and the timing certainly hurt Amazon and Flipkart and the broader sentiment of global investors.

Overall, I am afraid that this was not well implemented. It hurts the two large players and presents government interference and regulation as a potential risk for global investors.

Deepak Kumar Sahu Publisher & Editor-in-Chief 4 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

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CSR/CORPORATE

Kaspersky Lab defends gender equality and digital child safety in its latest CSR Report

Twitter India and Ministry of WCD celebrate rising women achievers

Kaspersky Lab has released its latest Corporate Social Responsibility Report – profiling the company’s technological, educational and charitable initiatives. This year’s report explores the work being done to promote gender equality in the technology industry across the globe, and how Kaspersky Lab is encouraging child education about digital security. The report reflects how the company is helping communities grow and contributing to making the world a better, and safer, place.

Kaspersky Lab is a proud advocate for gender equality in the technology industry. We understand that diverse workforces make businesses more successful, productive and dynamic, and we are committed to promoting careers in cyber security to women. We believe cyber security is not only a rewarding and exciting career but it also does a lot of good in the world to protect people, businesses and organizations from cyber threats. We need more women to help us plug the skills gap and widen the industry’s perspective on those threats.

Twitter India in partnership with the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development and human rights organization Breakthrough has announced a new campaign – #WebWonderWomen (WWW).

The campaign was launched in the presence of Maneka Gandhi, Indian Union Cabinet Minister for Women & Child Development; Colin Crowell, Global Vice President of Public Policy at Twitter and Sohini Bhattacharya, President & CEO of Breakthrough.

Aiming to elevate women’s voices, celebrating impacts both big and small, and giving a platform for social change, #WebWonderWomen (WWW) invites people to nominate their favourite Indian woman achiever with her Twitter @handle anywhere in the world, under one of the following categories – Health/Fitness Community Media, Literature, Art, Sports, Tech/STEM, Travel, Business, Legal/Policy, Governmental, Entertainment, Fashion/Beauty, Finance, Food, Environment.

Schneider Electric launches its ‘Go Green in the City 2019’ initiative

Sanskriti University signs MoU with ICAR-NBPGR

Schneider Electric has launched the Go Green in the City 2019, its annual global student contest to find bold ideas and innovative solutions for smarter, more energy-efficient and sustainable cities.

Now in its ninth year, Go Green in the City is a major event for business and engineering students worldwide. In 2018, over 24,000 young innovators from more than 3,000 universities in 163 countries took part, including 58% women.

The stakes for Go Green in the City competitors are high.

In 2019, the competition should attract even more interest, thanks to the four specific topic categories.

Students are invited to submit their bold ideas in one of four categories: “Buildings of the Future”, “Plants of the Future”, “Grids of the Future” and “Sustainability and Access to Energy”.

6 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

Sanskriti University has signed an MOU with Indian Council of Agricultural Research – National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (ICAR-NBPGR) to further the cause of academic excellence and research.

This MoU is yet another feather in the cap of Sanskriti University in the series of MoUs signed with various national and international Universities and Organizations.

The students of School of Agriculture will now be able to pursue their internship at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) which is affiliated institute of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). This will further the cause of research at Sanskriti University and ICAR-NBPGR. Sanskriti University is committed to the cause of Research and Innovation in various areas of academics, research, R&D, publication, patents, incubation and commercialization.

CSR/CORPORATE

Flipkart with VRFA honours the families of martyred soldiers

HDFC Bank conducts the Parivartanblood donation drive

In the run-up to Republic Day this year, Flipkart will be running a fundraising and awareness campaign with the Vasantharatna Foundation for Arts (VRFA) to honour the families of martyred Indian soldiers.

VRFA works with the wives and children of martyrs to help restore their independence and sense of belonging.

This initiative will give the Foundation access to Flipkart’s pan-India user base of 150 million and will allow those shopping on the platform to contribute to a good cause. It will aid VRFA’s continuing work towards women’s empowerment, child and youth development, and general awareness building within the civilian community.

According to the KPMG survey 2018, the CSR expenditure

by Indian companies on war veterans this accounted to only 7 crores, significantly less compared to 31 crores the previous year.

The heroes of the country who often live away from their families to serve the nation are often not treated in a way they deserve.

The fact that they constantly live under threat is overlooked.

HDFC Bank has announced the completion of its 12th national Blood Donation Drive and the successful collection of over 1 million units of blood over a period of 12 years.

This year the initiative saw the participation from people

between the age groups of 18-65 donated blood at nearly 4,000 Blood donation camps setup in more than 1,100 cities across India and resulted in the collections of over 3 lakh units of blood.

The Blood Donation Drive is a CSR initiative of Parivartan, HDFC Bank’s umbrella brand for all its social development programmes. HDFC Bank commenced its annual Blood Donation drive in 2007 to reduce the deficit of safe blood available for transfusion.

Fisheye creates #MeToo video by Ambuja Cement’s Neev addressing women in advertising Abhiyan promotes sustainable construction Fisheye Creative Solutions has launched a one-minute video supporting the #MeToo movement that has taken the business world by storm. The video pushes the #MeToo campaign to the next level by asking women in the advertising industry to keep the momentum going, to keep speaking up against sexual harassment in the work space, to keep ‘outing’ the offenders.

Throwing light on the video, Dave Banerjee, CEO of Fisheye stated, “Why will any selfrespecting young girl look forward to joining this industry after all the horrific news that has been coming out?

While it is true that advertising has been known for its late nights and crazy parties, it has never been associated with sexual harassment by male bosses.

We are concerned that this will further impact our industry’s difficulty in attracting top-class talent."

Ambuja Cements has been setting new benchmarks in sustainable construction year after year. Among its various holistic programsincludes the very successful Neev Abhiyan initiative that imparts formal training to upskill masons and contractorsby strengthening their knowledge-base and technical skill-sets through certified training modules and value-added services which promote sustainable construction.

While this uniqueinitiative going on in full swing, the Technical Services team has organized numerous workshops since 2017 thereby successfully reaching out to about 41,000 contractors and masons.This program is also helping in addressing the growing demand for trained masons and contractors required by the rapidly growing construction sector in the country. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 7

CSR/PSU

Dharmendra Pradhan Chief Minister of Bihar inaugurates ONGC CSR project to Laid Foundation Stone for promote organic farming POWERGRID Sitamarhi Substation ONGC, in collaboration with Eklavya foundation has created Center for Agriculture Research and Training in Telang ana for training f a r m e r s in organic f a r m i n g using latest technology. Dharmendra Pradhan, Hon’ble Minister of Petroleum & Natural Gas and Skill Development and Entrepreneurship inaugurated the CSR project for construction of hostel, classrooms, computer labs & administrative block at the center benefiting more than 3500 farmers in organic farming.

Numaligarh Refinery Assam capacity to be expanded from 3 MMTPA to 9 MMTPA The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given approval to the project

for capacity expansion of Numaligarh Refinery from 3 MMTPA (Million Metric Tonne Per Annum) to 9 MMTPA. It involves setting up of the crude oil pipeline from Paradip to Numaligarh and product pipeline from Numaligarh to Siliguri at a cost of Rs.22, 594 crore. The project is to be completed within a period of 48 months, after approval and receipt of statutory clearances.

The total project cost of Rs. 22,594 crore will be financed by a mix of debt, equity and Viability Gap Funding (VGF). The debt of Rs.15,102 crore will be raised by Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL).

8 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

Nitish Kumar, Chief Minister of Bihar has laid the foundation stone for 400/220/132 kV Sitamarhi POWERGRID Substation at Village Parmanandpur in Sitamarhi District in Bihar on 17th January 2019. The programme was presided over by R. K. Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, New and Renewable Energy as chief guest on the occasion.

Shing said, “The Sub-station will be completed in two years and will supply power to Sitamarhi, Darbhanga, Madhubani, East Champaran, West Champaran and Sheohar districts of Bihar.

This Rs. 620 Crore project of Government of India will enable quality power."

PM to inaugurate NBCC built museum building

Founded on an amalgamation of technology and amenities in a Victorian structure, constructed and refurbished by state-owned Navratna PSU, NBCC (India) Limited, the National Museum of Indian Cinema (NMIC) will be a treat for historians, tourists and film buffs from across the world with Prime Minister Narendra Modi set to inaugurate the complex on January 2019.

Set in an elegant 19thcentury heritage bungalow in South Mumbai, the project involved refurbishing the historic Gulshan Mahal and constructing the state-ofthe-art NMIC building that has 5 floors and two Mezzanine floors accounting for a total built-up area of 12,000 sq. metres.

NBCC was able to complete the project despite facing challenges like the locality being a congested one, with barely any working space available. Apart from the space constraint, another major obstruction was restricted working hours along with regulated sound decibels. The movement and entry for the heavy vehicles were also restricted during day time.

CSR/PSU

B V Rama Gopal, Director (Refineries), IndianOil flags-off ‘SAKSHAM-2019’ BV Rama Gopal, Director (Refineries), IndianOil has inaugurated ‘SAKSHAM-2019’ (Sanrakshan Kshamata Mahotsav), the month-long oil & gas conservation mass awareness campaign, at Refineries Headquarters in New Delhi on 16th December 2018.

He administered the 'SAKSHAM' pledge and later in his address to the functional heads and senior members of Team RHQ, urged IOCians to cultivate conservation of energy as a habit in daily life. Rama Gopal also shared that the demand for energy and petroleum products will continue to rise to fuel India's sustained growth. The mandate by the Govt. of India for a 10% reduction in the energy import bill by the year 2022, makes it imperative to conserve petroleum products using innovation, technology and harnessing alternative energy sources.

BHEL wins largest order for Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) plants Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has won an order for setting up 129 MW Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) power plants in Telangana from Singareni Collieries Company Limited.

Significantly, valued at Rs.565 Crore, this is the largest SPV power plant order won by BHEL till date.

The plants are to be set up at four locations in Telangana – Ramagundam (50 MW), Yellandu (39 MW), Manuguru (30 MW) and Pegadapally (10 MW).

And the scope of work will include the design, development, supply, installation, and commissioning of the project on an Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) basis.

BHEL is one of the very few companies in India, having established capability in major segments of the PV value chain viz., solar cells, PV modules, and power conditioning units and systems.

NTPC CMD hails NCL’s coal quality in a letter to CMD NCL Gurdeep Singh, Chairman and Managing Director of NTPC Limited, has expressed his happiness over the quality of coal being supplied by Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL) to NTPC. Singh, who visited Nigahi coal mine of NCL on last Saturday, in a letter written to CMD NCL P. K. Sinha, has stated that due to the persistent efforts of NCL management, NTPC’s Vindhyachal, Singrauli and Rehand powerhouses are getting quality coal and there are rarely any occasion of grade slippages.

Singh has expressed his gratitude to NCL management for arranging mine visit which was an excellent experience to observe the mining operations closely and also other planning activities for continued and uninterrupted production. Along with this, he also thanked Sinha for joining NTPC in cultural activities organized during 'Shishir Mela' of NTPC Vindhyachal.

REIL MD inaugurates workshop for implementation of Grid Connected Rooftop Solar A. K. Jain, MD - Rajasthan Electronics Instruments Ltd (REIL) has inaugurated a workshop for implementation of Grid Connected Rooftop Solar in the presence of officials of its allocated 10 ministries & selected developers for MNRE’s achievement linked incentive scheme on 10th January 2019, Scope Convention Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi. Piyush Paliwal, ED, REIL welcomed the officials from the allocated ministries and their attached officials, MNRE and developers. The workshop received overwhelms response by way of participation of nearly 60 personnel from these offices. J. K. Jethani, Director, MNRE also joined a special invitee.

Jain apprised the REIL working as expert CPSE and PMC has already completed RTS projects of 16 MW in CAPEX model mainly under the Ministry of Coal and Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gases. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 9

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Welthungerhilfe rolls out pilot project to tackle malnutrition with Microsoft AI Welthungerhilfe, one of the largest private aid organizations in Germany has launched a project in India to help address malnutrition in children with the Child Growth Monitor solution, a cloud-based, smartphone application powered by Microsoft Azure and AI services.

Developed by Welthungerhilfe, Child Growth Monitor is an intelligent application that can detect malnutrition and enable health workers identify and provide care to children struggling from chronic undernourishment.

India is the first country to pilot this project. Welthungerhilfe’s India based partner Action Against Hunger is scanning 10,000 children under the age of five years across Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan by March 2019.

The current data available on childhood undernourishment around the globe is inaccurate as manual weight measurement scales often lack standardization.

Govt. to launch an end-to-end prediction system for predicting thunderstorms/lightning by April 2019

Last year during the premonsoon season a series of thunderstorm/dust storm affected the northern states and claimed about 200 lives. In view of this the India Meteorological Department will be implementing an end-toend prediction system for predicting thunderstorms/lightning by April 2019. Union Minister of Science and Technology, Earth Sciences and Environment and Forests and Climate Change, Dr. Harsh Vardhan told at a press conference in New Delhi that Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) and IMD are developing prediction tools for thunderstorm/lightning. IITM Pune has already installed 48 lightning sensors around the country which can locate the thunderstorm/lightning activities on real time. IITM Pune also developed a Mobile App called “DAMINI” to give alerts on impending lightning activity over the area. The DAMINI App is available from Google Stores.

HPE to offer healthcare services at Gujarat’s largest public hospital

MyDoc and UST Global set up JV to offer accessible healthcare for working professionals

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced that the recently inaugurated Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Hospital (SVPIMSR), Ahmedabad, Gujarat has selected HPE SimpliVity 380 for its centralized datacenter infrastructure to host their mission critical applications including the integrated H o s p i t a l Information S y s t e m (iHIS),Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and more.

Managed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), SVPIMSR features 32 Operating Theatres, 139 Intensive Care Units, and over 1600 beds spread across 18 floors. In addition to offering high quality healthcare services to the people of the region, the state-of-the-art facility is designed to meet the future demands of patients with a continued focus on their care, safety and satisfaction.

MyDoc has formed a joint venture (JV) to cut health costs for millions of working professionals in India. The MyDocUST Global JV is aimed at helping people stay out of hospitals and stay well for longer.

The unique partnership combines MyDoc’s best practices, battle tested in one of the world’s most advanced healthcare systems, with one of India’s largest technology solutions provider to deliver healthcare services at scale to the Indian public.

Starting with over 14,000 employees at UST Global centres throughout India, the new company will tackle employee health and take aim at the prevalence of people living with lifestylerelated chronic diseases and the rising cost of care in India.

“The traditional healthcare market in India is led by hospital based groups and prices in the sector have increased beyond reach for the middle class,” said Dr. Snehal Patel, CEO and CoFounder of MyDoc.

10 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

NEWS/DIGITAL INDIA

AAI Launched Skyfit Mobile App for aviation fraternity

Womaniya initiative launched on Government e Marketplace

Assam Finance Dept. to use social media for state budget

Government stick to the February 1 deadline for e-tailers

Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister of Civil Aviation, launched the official mobile application 'Skyfit' for the Aviation fraternity on 16th January 2019 during the Global Aviation Summit at Mumbai. The application was launched in the presence of Shri Jayant Sinha, Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Shri R N Choubey, Secretary, Civil Aviation, Dr. Shefali Juneja, Joint Secretary, Civil Aviation, Shri Anil Gupta, ED (LM&BD), ?Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Dr. Ashok Bhatt, CEO &Founder, AGP Breath works.

The 'Skyfit' mobile application is available on Google play store and iOS. The application is devised to address the occupational stress of the personnel in aviation, be it air traffic controllers, pilots, cabin crews, Ground Handlers, Air Passengers etc.

AAI has developed simple breathing exercises, in consultation with Dr Ashok Bhatt Medical consultant from AGP Breath works and coordination with experts who have practiced these ancient techniques from yogic traditions, for decades and have found encouraging results in managing the stress of the aviation personnel, by just improving the way we breathe.

For the first time, the Assam Finance Department will use social media as an additional platform to inform and engage citizens on the state's 2019-20 budget.

A decision to this effect was taken by the department as social media is an effective tool to gauge public mood, acquire feedback and also to engage citizens for the forthcoming budget, a spokesman of the department said.

The budget will be presented by state Finance Minister HimantaBiswaSarma in the Assembly on February 6.

The use of social media for seeking people's participation and inputs in the budget is also one of the first of its kind experiment in the country and has been very effective so far, the spokesman said.

In 11 days, the department has reached out to more than 1.6 lakh people by posting 200 feeds on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in 11 days, he said.

Government e Marketplace [GeM] has launched “Womaniya on GeM”, an initiative to enable women entrepreneurs and women self-help groups [WSHGs] to sell handicrafts and handloom, accessories, jute and coir products, home décor and office furnishings, directly to various Government ministries, departments and institutions.

The initiative seeks to develop women entrepreneurship on the margins of society to achieve gender-inclusive economic growth.

CEO GeM,S Radha Chauhan, released a 3-minute video to highlight the essence and benefits of the Womaniya initiative. She stressed the fact that nearly 80 percent women-owned establishments are self-financed and more than 60 percent of 8 million units are owned and or led by women entrepreneurs from socially-challenged sections of the society.

Since women tend to invest up to 90 percent of their earnings back in their families to provide better nutrition, health care and education to their children, economic empowerment of women is a step in the direction of poverty alleviation.

The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) said that they will not extend the deadline of February 1 for implementing the revised guidelines for e-commerce companies having foreign direct investment. Though earlier Amazon and Flipkart have asked two different deadline for the extension on the FDI policy, the new rules will come into effect on Friday as per plan.

"After due consideration, it has been decided, with the approval of the competent authority, not to extend the deadline," it said in a statement.

The fact is, Cloudtail and Appario Retail, which sell on Amazon and have equity participation from the US e-commerce major, will not be allowed to sell on the platform. It is a good news for the growth of the brick and mortar shops in the country, but a huge blow for the two e-tailers. If they will not comply with the new law that will come into force from today, it will be treated as its violation. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 11

GOVT. NEWS

ECI organizes workshop for RJs on voter awareness

Kinnar Akhara, new feature at Prayagraj Kumbh

Election Commission of India has organized a workshop for Radio Jockeys (RJs) of leading FM channels including All India Radio and various private FM channels. Total 19 Radio jockeys from major FM channels viz.

Big FM, Red FM, Fever 104 FM, Radio Nasha, Ishq FM and Radio City attended 2 hours of interactive session, where they participated in activities for dissemination of voter education.

The workshop is a part of the engagement taken up by the commission with the major stakeholders. The workshop was organized to familiarize the Radio Jockeys with the election process so that they can help in wide and accurate dissemination of information to their listeners.

The session began with introduction to the workshop by A. K. Pathak, Secretary, Election Commission of India, thereafter, the participants were provided information on the various initiatives of Voter education taken by the Commission with special focus on EVM VVPAT awareness.

Kinnar Akhara, a group of transgender saints pursuing religious activities has emerged as a very significant feature at Prayagraj Kumbh.

A c h a r y a Mahamandaleshwar Lakshmi Narayanan Tripathi has said that transgenders were badly exploited in the society and even their parents were forced to live a disgraceful life. He said transgenders have been part of Sanatan Dharm and they have been given respectful status in religious epics and books of Hindu mythology.

He said Akhara has provided a forum to transgenders to pursue a dignified life with religious rituals. He said Juna Akhara a traditional powerful Akhara of Sanyasi saints and seers has given the recognition to Kinnar Akhara and has allowed to be part of Shahi Snan procession. Expressing gratitude towards Acharya Mahamandaleshwar of Juna Akhara Swami Awadeshanand Ji Maharaj and Mahamandaleshwar Hari Giri Ji Maharaj Kinnar Akhara chief said that Akhara has felt honoured with the decision.

PM inaugurates National Museum of Indian Cinema

Chandravaan-2 to be launched between March 25 - April 30: ISRO Chairman

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inaugurated the National Museum of Indian Cinema in Mumbai. The Prime Minister took a tour of the Museum, after which he addressed a gathering of the film fraternity. Speaking on the occasion, he congratulated everyone for the inauguration of NMIC, which he said showcases the entire history of Indian cinema in one place. He also congratulated the film fraternity, under whose guidance Indian cinema has been continuously making new strides.

The Prime Minister asked young and old present alike – “How’s the josh” – and said that their zeal is extremely important for building a New India.

Talking about NMIC, he said that it showcases the multifaceted aspects of the film industry, its rich tradition and the struggles the people have undergone in making movies. It will serve as an opportunity for the younger generation to understand several aspects of films and film-making.

12 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

The launch window for Chandravaan-2 is March 25 - April 30 this year, said Chairman, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Dr K Sivan, while addressing a press conference.

He said that ISRO has planned 32 missions this year. Elaborating on the priority areas of ISRO, the Chairman said that these include Gaganyaan project, reaching out to students, outreach programmes, planned missions of this year and Vikram Sarabhai Centenary celebrations.

For the first time, ISRO has announced the ‘Young Scientists Programme’ to encourage the scientific talent and increase scientific pool in the country. Under this programme, Dr Sivan said, 3 students from each state and UT will be selected for ISRO programme for one month during which they will visit ISRO centres, interact with senior scientists and will have access to Research and Development facilities.

GOVT. NEWS

Union Home Minister approves Task Force report on Space Technology in Border Management Home Minister Rajnath Singh has approved report of Task Force created by MHA to identify areas for use of Space Technology in improving Border Management. The Task Force headed by Joint Secretary (Border Management) and having members from BSF, Department of Space and BM Division, MHA consulted all stakeholders including Border Guarding Forces (BGFs), ISRO, National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) to finalize the report.

The areas identified for use of space technology are - Island development; Border Security; Communication and Navigation; GIS & Operations Planning System and Border Infrastructure Development.

NMCG officials and partners come together to contribute to Clean Ganga fund

The officials and partners of National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) came together on one platform to make personal donations to the Clean Ganga Fund on a voluntary basis. Officials from various executing agencies, stakeholders and partners with Team NMCG including State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, Engineers India Ltd., WAPCOS, HDFC etc contributed to the Clean Ganga Fund at an event held at the NMCG headquarters.

Director General, NMCG, Rajiv Ranjan Mishra requested all partners and stakeholders to contribute to the Clean Ganga Fund and become a part of this great mission to clean our national river. He said, “To sustain this mission, public outreach is a major strategy and therefore we seek more and more people and corporates to contribute to the CGF and become partners in the Clean Ganga Mission. Joining the cause is more important than the monetary contribution. Many corporates have come forward and joined us as partners.”

Revision of guidelines pertaining PM releases Commemorative Coin to mark birth anniversary of to development of NER The Government has approved a central sector scheme Guru Gobind Singh jee Prime Minister Narendra Modi has released a commemorative coin of Rs. 350 in the national capital to mark the birth anniversary celebrations of Guru Gobind Singh jee. He lauded the lofty ideals and values of the Guru Gobind Singh jee – the selfless service to humanity, devotion, heroism and sacrifice and urged the people to follow his path.

The Prime Minister was addressing a select gathering at his residence, 7 Lok Kalyan Marg after releasing the commemorative coin to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh jee. Modi said that Guru Gobind Singh ji was a great warrior, philosopher poet and guru. He fought against oppression and injustice. His teachings to people focused on breaking the barriers of religion and caste. His message of love, peace and sacrifice are equally relevant today.

of North East Special Infrastructure Development Scheme (NESIDS) with 100% central funding restructuring the block grant of 90:10 under the scheme of Non-lapsable Central Pool of Resources (NLCPR). While framing the guidelines for NESIDS, the provisions of guidelines of NLCPR, as revised in 2016, were retained which, inter-alia, includes the constitution of State Level Empowered Committee (SLEC) under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary of the States; delegation of power of vetting of projects to the states through SLEC; strengthening of project portal for online submission of documents; emphasizing completion of ongoing projects by releasing more funds against them; putting a cap on value of retention of new project; provisioning of release of only token amount of Rs. 10 lakh at the time of sanction of the project with balance to be released on receipt of award of work; and reducing the number of installments for release of funds from three to two. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 13

INTERNATIONAL EVENT

Top global leaders converge at Davos, call for rules on Technology mandate The annual summit in Davos is probably the world’s most iconic display of elite-driven globalization. Thousands of leaders in business, finance, politics, and civic society gather in the snowcovered Alps to schmooze and strike deals, intended to break down economic barriers between nations and make the global community more connected. Davos is the ultimate club for establishment elites.

This year, the rich and the powerful from across the globe are flocking to the ski resort town of Davos on the Swiss Alps for five days beginning today to discuss what's ailing the world economy.

More than 100 CEOs from India are expected to attend.

civil society leaders, media heads, celebrities and heads of international organisations like IMF, WTO, OECD and World Bank. CEOs of Adidas, Rio Tinto, Embraer, AXA, SocieteGenerale, Total, Allianz, Bayer, Deutsche Bank, Lufthansa, KPMG, Siemens, Generali, Hitachi, Nomura, Sumitomo, IKEA, Royal Dutch Shell, Telenor, Alibaba, Credit Suisse, Nestle, Novartis, UBS, Barclays, BP, Standard Chartered, Unilever, Bank of America, Cargill, Citi, Cisco, Dell, IBM, Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo, Pfizer, CocaCola and Visa. CEOs are also present.

Microsoft's Indian-origin CEO Satya Nadella and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim are among the co-chairs of the 2019 edition of this annual congregation of world leaders from January 21-25.

Nadella and Kim would be joined by six young leaders under the age of 30 as cochairs -- BasimaAbdulrahman from Iraq, Juan David Aristizabal from Colombia, Sweden's NouraBerrouba, Julia Luscombe from the US, Mohammed Hassan Mohamud from Kenya and Japan's Akira Sakano.

The global public figures would include Afghanistan's Abdullah Abdullah, King and Queen of Belgium, King of Morocco, Queen of Jordan as also presidents of Azerbaijan, Brazil, Columbia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Iraq, Peru, Rwanda, Serbia, South Africa and Ukraine, among other countries. The prime ministers would include those of Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Malaysia, Nepal, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Peru, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

The theme of the event would be 'Globalization 4.0: Shaping a Global 14 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

Professor Klaus Schwab

Founder and Executive Chairman World Economic Forum Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution'. There would be several India-focussed sessions. Besides, the country's political scenario may hog the limelight, with the event taking place after five state polls and ahead of the national election.

The event would also be attended by CEOs of a large number of MNCs, global corporations, central bankers, economists,

"The world's biggest democracy needs to stand with the world's other great democratic nations. The world needs India," Microsoft's President and Chief Legal Officer Bradford L Smith said here at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019.

During the discussion, Smith and other experts hoped that democracies which have not signed the Paris Call of November 12, 2018 for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, including India and the US, will join the multi-stakeholder initiative to discuss on the development of common principles for securing the cyberspace.

Since cyber security is crucial to keep the world safe, global leaders have urged India and the US to join an international

India Ready for the Drone Revolution, Pilots New Open Source Guide for Governments India will be the next destination for the drone revolution as the state Andhra Pradesh gears up to pilot the Advanced Drone Operators Toolkit.

The State Government of Andhra Pradesh announced at the World Economic Forum’s Davos Summit 2019 that it will start testing the policy frameworks developed in the newly released Advanced Drone Operators Toolkit to enable statewide drone delivery operations.

“Andhra Pradesh is proud to be the first government partner to implement the Advanced Drone Operations Toolkit,” said Lokesh Nara, Minister for Information Technology and Rural Development in Andhra Pradesh. “We look forward to leveraging the insights from the toolkit to implement a drone delivery program that will bring key medical supplies to communities across our State.”

The open source guide from the World Economic Forum, the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation, was also launched at the Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos. It was developed after extensive collaboration with the governments of Rwanda, the government of Switzerland and leveraging the work of the Drone Innovator’s Network (DIN). It is the first user manual for governments looking to roll out socially impactful, advanced drone operations.

This open source collection of lessonslearned was designed to help governments overcome the hurdles of implementing drone regulations and accelerate access to airspace, while maintaining safety and security. It also includes specific steps for governments, interested in implementing similar programmes, to consider.

“Safe, clean, inclusive and scaled drone use has become the goal of many nations,” said Harrison Wolf, report author and project lead at the Forum’s Centre for

the Fourth Industrial Revolution. “Now, governments can learn from the real-world success of world leading drone delivery projects in Africa and Europe to develop their own national oversight. Through comparative analysis of shared lessons, learned by governments and private players, this toolkit means governments don’t have to start from scratch and can begin societally important, socially responsible operations. We are really looking forward for the initializing of the pilot project in India.”

“I am very proud that Switzerland and

PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI AT DAVOS SUMMIT my authority are part of the Advanced Drone Operations Toolkit,” said Christian Hegner, Director General of Director General of Civil Aviation, Switzerland. In 2020, the Swiss FOCA will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) authorization. We learnt a lot during these past years. Sharing our expertise and learning from other countries will help accelerating and scaling safe drone operations worldwide.”

“For over two years, Zipline has been the world’s largest provider of drone delivery services, and we were happy to contribute our experience to the development of the Advanced Drone Operations Toolkit,” said Will Hetzler, CoFounder, Zipline. “This is an important

resource that will help governments to enable lifesaving operations like drone delivery of health products. We are excited to continue working with the Forum through the Drone Innovators Network to realize this technology’s transformational potential for the world.”

"We are honored to be a founding member of the Drone Innovators Network and a contributor to the Advanced Drone Operators Toolkit," said Ben Marcus, Co-founder and Chairman at AirMap. "AirMap is actively partnering with regulators, airspace managers, and solutions providers to enable safe and accountable drone operations around the world. Our work in Switzerland provides an excellent example of what is possible today and shows a clear path for other governments to embrace similar programs."

The stories and information were captured first-hand by the World Economic Forum. The Drones and Tomorrow’s Airspace team spoke directly with policymakers, entrepreneurs, regulators and technical experts who have fundamentally shifted the dialogue from what “may” be possible to what “is” possible, in a very short time. Insights and recommendations from the most successful projects outline what it takes to launch and oversee advanced drone operations.

New airspace regulations It also introduces governments all over the world to a new approach to oversight created by the World Economic Forum Drone and Tomorrow’s Airspace community, the Performance Based Regulations (PBR). Using PBR, airspace can be accessed by any unmanned aircraft on a mission-specific basis: the government specifies the safety standard of the mission, and the drone operators specify how they are going to meet it. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 15

INTERNATIONAL EVENT coalition against cyber threats.

"We do know that 30 million Americans have read intentional disinformation by governments, and they shared it, they liked it, and they believed it. It was done with the goal of disrupting democracy. It was not limited to the United States alone ‌ Every single candidate running for the French presidency was attacked in some way. It is a problem, a threat to democracy, and needs to be addressed," he said.

Smith and other cybersecurity experts emphasized the importance of attribution but said that itself is not enough.

Smith also said that the responsibility for security begins with the tech companies themselves. "Tech companies and the sector as a whole need to address this, and they must start with acknowledging the scepticism," he said.

Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America also gave a special address. "The world is witnessing the resurgence of a strong and prosperous America. I am here to deliver a simple message: There has never been a better time to hire, to build, to invest and to grow in the United States. AMERICA IS OPEN FOR BUSINESS AND WE ARE COMPETITIVE ONCE AGAIN. The American economy is by far the largest in the world and we have just enacted the most significant tax cuts and reforms IN AMERICAN HISTORY. We massively cut taxes for the middle class and small businesses to let working families keep more of their hard-earned money.

We lowered our corporate tax rate from 35 percent, all the way down to 21 percent. As a result, millions of workers have received tax cut bonuses from their employers in amounts as large as three thousand dollars. The tax cut bill is expected to raise the average American’s household income by more than four thousand dollars," he said.

Alison Martin, group chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance Company said cyber is the number one risk of doing business in many parts of the world. He further explains, "If you drive badly, then we 16 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

WORLD LEADERS AT DAVOS SUMMIT charge you a bit more. But if you have bad digital hygiene, you risk infecting everyone, so charging more isn't the answer."

"Besides, economic loss due to cyber crime is predicted to reach USS 3 trillion by 2020, and 74 per cent of the world's businesses can expect to be hacked in the coming year, another research has showed," Martin said.

Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe said on Wednesday that his country would use its chairmanship of the Group of 20 nations this year to push for a new international system governing how data is used.

Executives from Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple wined and dined with the elected officials and regulators who are responsible for holding their companies to account. A lot is at stake.

The European Union is looking to enforce its new privacy regulations, and in the United States the Federal Trade Commission is expected to round out its investigation of Facebook within the next month or so.

Countries including India, Indonesia, Ukraine and Israel will be watching to see whether social media is rife with false news and disinformation, and the tech companies will have a chance to show that they have changed for the better. French regulators announced that they had fined Google 50 million euros, or about $57 million, for not properly disclosing how it collected data about its users across its services. Adam Satariano wrote that it was the largest penalty of its kind levied by the European Union, which last year

adopted a sweeping new data privacy law known as the General Data Protection Regulation.

From India, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Dharmendra Pradhan have dropped out of this year's event and so has Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

The political leaders from India who is attending the event includes Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu, Andhra Pradesh minister Lokesh Nara and Punjab minister ManpreetBadal.

There are a number of Indian corporate honchos among the registered participants, including Gautam Adani, Mukesh Ambani (with wife Nita and children Akash and Isha), Sanjiv Bajaj, N Chandrasekaran, Sajjan Jindal, Anand Mahindra, Sunil Mittal, Nandan Nilekani, Salil Parekh, Azim Premji and son Rishad, C P Gurnani, Sajjan Jindal, Baba Kalyani, ShobanaKamineni, Manish Kejriwal, Sunil Mittal, Pawan Munjal, RoshniNadar, AbidaliNeemuchwala, Salil S Parekh, Adar C Poonawala, Ravi and Prashant Ruia, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Tulsi Tanti with daughter Nidhi, Ajay Singh and Kapil Wadhawan who are also expected to attend the event.

Celebrity film producer and director Karan Johar, former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan, New Development Bank President K V Kamath and IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath are also expected to be there.

www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 17

BUDGET 2019

Interim Budget 2019 - Let's Not Get Too Excited

By Anuj Puri, Chairman – ANAROCK Property Consultants Before every annual Budget, the real estate sector trots out a highly optimistic (and unrealistic) wish list to the Finance Ministry. Whether the industry actually expects the upcoming Budget to cure all its woes with a wave of its magic wand is beside the point. Unrealistic expectations - many completely outside the purview of the Finance Ministry - have become the norm.

Single-window clearance, industry status and hiked tax exemptions limits which will miraculously revive demand for properties have become the usual suspects in such wish lists. Let’s be rational in our expectations from an interim budget which is announced shortly before general elections.

Though the larger ‘acche din’ premise is debated to the present day, the first Union Budget under the Modi Government in 2014 was certainly a harbinger of change for buyers and builders.

Taxpayers' exemption limit was increased after a decade of forlorn waiting. During the Government’s entire term, affordable housing got the maximum attention via infrastructure status for this specific segment, and various other sops and incentives.

The subsequent budgets were concoctions of positives, negatives and non-events for real estate.

While outlining what the real estate sector can realistically expect from Union Budget 2019-20, the fact that this is an interim budget cannot be wished away. In such budgets, the incumbent Government usually tries to make a strong electoral pitch by offering tax sops or promises of welfare schemes. Previous Governments have candidly done the same, but all have to follow a model code limit.

This year, we must temper our optimism with realism and not expect major boosts for the real estate sector in the Interim Budget. That said, there are 18 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

certainly electoral parameters to consider - for the common man (vote-bearing homebuyer) tax reliefs will count. For industry players (major contributors to election campaigns), alleviation of the severe liquidity crisis is high on the wish list.

Major Tax Benefits to Homebuyers This is, of course, a more or less perennial expectation. In order to woo middle-class taxpayers (who live in perpetual hope of further relief), the Government should (and quite possibly

may) offer tax benefits by way of I. Reduction in income tax slabs, and/or II. Higher relief on housing loan rates, and/or III. Increase in the deduction limit under Section 80C from the current Rs. 1.5 lakh a year.

The fact that the exemption limit (under Section 80C) was raised last in 2014 after a decade-long hiatus raises high expectations that this route may be revisited in this budget. It is certainly an assured crowd-pleaser, which matters in the electoral year. However, there's no getting around the fact that raising exemption limits comes at a concurrent cost to the exchequer. A fine balancing act is definitely in order here.

Re-Financing NBFCs by Raising Limits

For the industry at large, one of the

most critical steps that this budget can take is to increase the finance limits for NBFCs. NBFCs constituted more than 50% developer finance in 2018 as against 30% in 2011. The NBFC crisis post the IL&FS default in September 2018 spelt doom for real estate players, and the ensuing fund crunch resulted in stalled projects all around. The Government must revive the sector by pumping in more money into NBFCs who lend to developers.

Determined Infra Push to Drive Growth The current Government’s undisputed focus on infrastructure development should spell good news for the real estate sector.

Though generous funds were allocated for various highways projects in the previous budget, the real estate industry depends on faster road building because improved connectivity is the lifeblood of the industry. Apart from that, the creation of more employment in the infrastructure sector can redeem the incumbent Government's well-documented shortfall on that front - again, an important electoral consideration.

PMAY Investments - Ensure Serious On-ground Activity As per Ministry of Housing Affairs data, the total estimated investment under PMAY as on January 2019 is INR 3.87 lakh crore, of which approx. 27% has been sanctioned by the Central Government while only 32% of the sanctioned amount has been released so far. Evidently, despite the Government's concerted efforts to gain ground on its Housing for All promise, the deficit is too large to ignore.

These are rational expectations.

However, at the end of the day, the upcoming budget may focus squarely on wooing voters collectively rather than boosting specific industries. In other words, let's be realistic and not overly optimistic.

www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 19

EVENTS

OITF 2019

HIGHLIGHTS

THE GROWTH

AREAS THAT IS

TRANSFORMING

THE STATE

DR. PRASANNA KUMAR PATASANI MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, GOVT. OF INDIA

C J VENUGOPAL

PRINCIPAL SECRETARY, ELECTRONICS & IT DEPARTMENT, GOVT. OF ODISHA

Bhubaneswar, Odisha recently played host to the VARINDIA 11th edition of Odisha Information Technology Fair - OITF 2019that provided a platform to the IT industry to converge and discuss some of the key vital issues concerning the state. The invitees to the event included IT & Telecom honchos, senior Government officials, industry leaders, VARs and SIs. The evening commenced with the ceremonial lamp lighting ceremony in the presence of high profile guests that included Chandra Sarathi Behera, Minister of Electronics & Information Technology, Sports & Youth Services, Government of Odisha; Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani, Member of Parliament, Govt. of India; Priyadarshi Mishra, MLA-Bhubaneswar (North), Govt. of Odisha; CJ Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha and Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAIand Mr Deepak Kumar Sahu, Chief Editor, VARINDIA. While talking about the growth of start-ups that are emerging in cities such as Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Pune and Ahmedabad in his opening speech, Dr Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA said that as per the survey done by VARINDIA, there are around 15,000 start-ups in the country that is slowly moving towards 20,000. “India continues to rank third in the global pecking order of start-ups ecosystem, after the US and Israel,” he said. “These start-ups are rapidly embracing the smaller cities over the bigger metros by targeting the growth of key industries such as fintech, health tech, SaaS, agritech, Taxi aggregators, B2B enterprise products (e-commerce) and deep technologies etc. Now the start-ups are really growing to solve the regional specific issues with deep learning and special designed AI techniques. It’s really an amazing experience.During our survey, we visited a few start-ups 20 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

and found out that they are aiming at solving immediate issues that are affecting people at the grass root level.”

The evening saw the government officials, as well as top industry executives present speak on topics concerning technology in the state. C J Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha enlightened the audience on the opportunities in Bhubaneswar and it could be turned into a smart city. He said, “We have a very good ICT policy which brings very good incentives for the ICT sector. We have moved a proposal to set up a mobile manufacturing unit here in Odisha. We are also in the process of discussing with several other manufacturing vendors to make the electronic manufacturing cluster in the state.”

Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI spoke about the telecom and digital landscape in the country, while also giving the roadmap for 5G in 2019. “If we look at the industry today, it has invested 15 lakh crore rupees in terms of spectrum and network investments. Odisha has around 17,000 cell towers and Rs 5,000 crore has been invested already, while looking further for growing the network.”

In the corporate presentations, IT Corporates, Sophos and NetApp shared their vision for the state and how to make it smarter. Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos presented his company’s views by co-relating security to the physical world.

Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise IT Architect, NetApp spoke on how NetApp is committed to bringing the state-of-the-art technology to bring secure and scalable storage technology to the state of Odisha.

The theme for the panel discussion was Unlocking the Potential of Odisha and was moderated by Dr Deepak Kumar

11th

019

Odisha Information Technology Fair’19

HTS

WTH

AT IS

MING

ATE

Left to Right: Soubhagya Routray, Past President, ITAO ; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India ; Rajan S Mathews, Director General, COAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Dr. Deepak Kumar Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA; S Mohini Ratna, Editor, VARINDIA; Dr. Prasanna Kumar Patasani, Member of Parliament, Govt. of India; Sri. C J Venugopal, Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha ; Mr. Ayashkant Mohanty, M.D.Tatwa Technologies; Cmdr(Dr.) J Jena, Dy. Director General, COAI; Debabrata Panigrahi, M.D., Institute of Quality and Environment Management Services; Ashok K. Mohapatra, Chairman, Organising Committee, VARINDIA IT Cup

Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA. In Bhubaneswar, almost 90% of the smart city budget is allocated towards Area Based Development, which entails retrofitting, renewal and extensions in 985 acres of the city. This includes projects related to infrastructure engineering and building development, slum housing, green and park areas, road development and accessibility. The discussion delved into how it has become important for a robust infrastructure to be there in Bhubaneswar in order for it to become a smart city.

The panelists at the discussion were – Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDGCOAI; Rishi Sharma, Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos; Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India; Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India, and A K Mohanty, CEOTATWA Technologies.

The event also witnessed the award ceremony that felicitatedtwo vendors, Cisco and Sophos and the Regionals VARs from the state of Odisha. While Cisco was awarded in the category of Best Converged Infrastructure, the award for Best Security Services Company went to Sophos Technologies. Five Regional VARs were awarded in the categories of The Best VAR, Odisha; The Best Software Distributor, Odisha; The Best Reseller, Odisha; Best

Technology Services, Odisha; and The Best Software Services Company. The names of the winners respectively are - Nigama Comptech, Tristar Software and Solutions, Info care Solutions, Tatwa Technologies, and Suyog Computech.

The event also took the opportunity to felicitate the winners of the 9th VARINDIA IT Cup 2018 Cricket Tournament, which was played by 20 teams representing different companies. The cricket matches were played at Kishore Club Ground, Bhubaneswar and was supported by STPI and Electronics & IT Department, Govt. of Odisha.

The first semi-final match was played between Esquare and SPARC, where Esquare won the match by 8 wickets. In the second semi-final match played between TCS and Luminous Infoway, the latter (Luminous) won the match by 10 runs. The final match was played between Luminous Infoway and Esquare, in which Luminous Infoway clinched the title, while Esquare emerged as the Runner-up of the 9th VAR INDIA IT CUP 2019.

The Man of the Final Match award went to Soumya fromLuminous Infoway and S K Mustqul Ali of Luminous Infoway won the Man of the Tournament award. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 21

EVENTS C J VENUGOPAL Principal Secretary, Electronics & IT department, Govt. of Odisha “We have moved a proposal to set up a mobile manufacturing unit here in Odisha. We are also in the process of discussing with several other manufacturing vendors to make the electronic manufacturing cluster in the state very robust and vibrant. I request everyone to participate in this eco-system whenever it is required. Recently we had a meeting with all the ISPs from the communication infrastructure and had a detailed discussion. In the course of the discussion, we understood that out of the 40,000 villages in the country that have no mobile connectivity, close to 10,000 of them are in Odisha. This is extremely poorer state of affairs as far as the communication infrastructure is concerned. It is a matter of deep concern for all of us which we have taken up as a mission to see that every place is connected. The new National Digital Communications Policy talks of a huge 100 billion investments and how data is growing at a pace of 30 times on a year and year basis.”

RISHI SHARMA Sales Engineering Leader, Sophos “Everyone is award of the term ‘virus’. The full form of virus is Vital Information resource under seize. If we co-relate the security to the physical world, the latter has been in existence for the past thousands of years while digitization and computerization have been there for only past 15 years, not more than that. The crime in the physical world has been there for thousands of years and the crime that is happening in the digital world is inspired from the physical world. For instance Ransomware, which is nothing but the kidnapping of the data. The kidnapping used to happen in the real world as well but now that has started taking place in the digital world too. Sophos has been there in the industry for the last 33 years. Over these years our complete focus and forte has been cyber security, stating from endpoint security, scaling to network security and cloud security. Our complete focus is only on security.

The tagline of Sophos is – Cyber security made simple.”

RAJAN S MATHEWS Director General, COAI “In October of 2016, Reliance Jio has brought a significant transformation in the industry in terms of it moving to 4G. Previous to Reliance rolling out its network, there were 3 principal technologies in play – 2G, 3G and 4G. But once Reliance started its network operations, it became very clear that 4G is now the dominant technology. All of the operators are busy implementing 4G roll-outs in almost all the states. So we expect 4G coverage to happen very soon. Reliance has committed that 95% of the country will be covered by 4G in the next 8-9 months, which will be followed closely by Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, etc. When we look at the networks of today, what 4G does is also to prepare the country for 5G. Globally people are already talking about 6G and 5G is already becoming a part of yesterday’s story. The Govt. of India has put together a high level committee to ensure that India does not miss the bus in terms of developing IP, the royalty that is attached to the development of IP, developing manufacturing, training the people for the 5G environment and so on.”

TAUSIF SIDDIQUI Enterprise IT Architect, NetApp “We power up our customers to change the world with data. The world of technology is changing and we need to achieve a lot. There are a lot many things that need to be done. Technology is being viewed as the backbone and is changing our everyday lives. Every business needs to go through the stage of digital transformation. A lot of organizations nowadays have traditional IT from which they would like to deliver IT services but they cannot reach agility till the time they transform their business. And this is what we precisely do. As a data management company, we help the organizations to digitally transform their IT operations. According to the IDC report that came out in 2017 says that digital transformation spending of companies is going to hit $1.7 trillion. That is a huge budget if seen from an IT perspective and is a 22% increase from 2017. If you see 10 years back, the top organizations used to be in areas of Gas, manufacturing etc. But nowadays if you see, the top organizations are companies like Twitter, Facebook that have completely invested into digital.”

22 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

THE THEME FOR THE PANEL DISCUSSION WAS UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF ODISHA AND WAS MODERATED BY DR DEEPAK KUMAR SAHU, PRESIDENT & CEO, VARINDIA. On how technology has been a big enabler for developing the state of Odisha, A K Mohanty, CEO- TATWA Technologies said that the way things are moving now, technology is very much required for putting all the things together.

“To make cities smarter and citizens more smart, technology is an important enabler whether it is to obtain, retrieve or transfer data.”

Monoranjan Mohapatra, Founder- Suyog India said that for augmenting agriculture and farming in terms of their productivity through various government initiatives, a lot of technology research needs to be done in the background so that the right process could be understood.

Dr. Cmdr. J Jena, DDG- COAI said that developing the eco-system through scaled manpower and start-ups can become the starting point for large industries to come into the state. These become the main criteria for any industry to come and set up in Odisha.

Tausif Siddiqui, Enterprise Architect Leader, Netapp India said that it is not just about selling a product in a particular place but it is also about localized services by working with local partners, who understand the interests and preferences of the local customers better.

AWARDS AT THE EVENT

NIGAMA COMPUTECH RECEIVES THE AWARD AS THE BEST VAR,ODISHA

SOPHOS RECEIVES THE AWARD AS THE BEST SECURITY SERVICES COMPANY

SUYOG COMPUTECH RECEIVES AWARD AS THE BEST SOFTWARE SERVICS COMPANY,ODISHA

TATWA TECHNOLOGIES RECEIVES THE AWARD AS THE BEST TECHNOLOGY SERVICES COMPANY,ODISHA

INFOCARE RECEIVES THE AWARD AS THE BEST RESELLER,ODISHA

INFOCARE RECEIVES THE AWARD AS THE BEST RESELLER,ODISHA www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 23

What is in the industry’s

BUDGET

Wishlist?

The Interim Budget is going to be presented on 1st February, 2019, which is also going to be the final one by the Narendra Modi government ahead of the general elections. Unlike most other budgets, this typically isn’t a high-octane affair; governments are discouraged from locking their successors into any new spending or taxes.

While the 2018 budget witnessed increased impetus from the government on promoting new technologies like AI, ML, IoT, the 2019 Budget is expected to bringmore easy funding opportunities for start-up growth, given the interests shown by the Modi government in providing impetus to start-ups with initiatives like Start-Up India and Digital India.The Interim Budget is also wished to focus more on Digital India initiative in order to shape the IT infrastructure and increase adoption of technology to encourage digitization.

As far as the IoT ecosystem is concerned, the industry expectsthe government to give more focus on driving domestic innovations coupled with fiscal incentive schemes and liberalisation norms.

Below are a few vendors (irrespective of verticals) who put forward their expectations from the Budget before our readers SATYA PRABHAKAR CEO AND FOUNDER - SULEKHA.COM “The move of the Govt. of India to increase the GST exemption limit to Rs. 40 L is a pathbreaking pre-budget move. Given the small nature of MSMEs, the Govt’s move to also increase the annual turnover of the GST composition limit to Rs. 1.5 crores will also aid tremendous number of SMEs. Sulekha expects the Govt. to unveil several such steps in the upcoming Feb 1st budget including a possible provision of value-added services like marketing fees, advertising and other such promotions to be considered under a progressively lower GST tax structure. The Govt. can also consider increasing online accounting and online tax calculation procedures for thousands of MSMEs who will benefit from an easy compliance regime.”

24 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

BUDGET 2019 RAHUL GARG CEO & FOUNDER - MOGLIX “We are looking forward to the upcoming budget, as it is expected to bring some significant changes in policy and tax system. In the past, making way for the GST, policy reforms& implementations around digitalisation etc. by the government led to rise in India’s ranking in the ease of doing business index. However, the recent policy amendment to the foreign direct investment (FDI) bill is ambiguous and can slow down the speed of start-ups in the country. The government should come up with regulations that simplifies our life as entrepreneurs and makes it easy to run businesses. The Government in the past has introduced several schemes targeted to encourage and boost the start-up ecosystem, however we still have a long way to go and a steady momentum needs to be maintained.”

DR RISHI BHATNAGAR CHAIRMAN OF THE IET IOT PANEL, THE IET INDIA & PRESIDENT – AERIS COMMUNICATIONS “At the telecom industry level, we would like the Government to publish an implementation plan/roadmap for the various strategies outlined in NDCP 2018 and Budget 2019/future budgets to allocate funds in-line with the plan for the implementation. This shall not only give a clear direction and push to us working towards achieving the 2022 strategic objectives and goals defined in NDCP but also send a strong message globally of a stable telecom regulatory and policy environment in India. Further we would like to see a clear national design for best coverage for India - independent of the individual telcos.

Specific to IoT and to encourage its faster growth in India our wish is to establish a data ecosystem, where all relevant partners can participate, to develop a structured plan, how to roll out data services based on IoT for the future.”

RAKESH DUGAR, CMD - MITASHI EDUTAINMENT "As the country heads towards the general elections, we expect the government to favour expansionary economic policies that would give space to growth-boosting measures with the interim budget; some of them have already been announced like raising the GST limit and seat reservations in education and we can expect more announcements like personal and commercial tax concessions, interest free loans to farmers, job reservations and other policies favouring local businesses. All these announcements will likely weigh down on the government’s finances, but with inflation low the government can afford to be less conservative and push ahead with a few crowd-pleasing measures without very adverse effects in the long run. Mitashi believes that exponential growth is possible in the appliance and consumer electronics (ACE) industry given the low levels of penetration of electronics and appliances when compared to global averages. An environment with stable policies and incentives will help drive growth and can make India self-reliant and globally competitive."

AVNEET SINGH MARWAH, DIRECTOR AND CEO OF SUPER PLASTRONICS PVT. LTD, A KODAK BRAND LICENSEE “The Indian government has been very supportive to the TV manufacturing industry and the recent reduction in GST has proven to be a great example. In a move to promote domestic manufacturing, we are expecting FM to reduce customs duty on ‘open cell’ used in the manufacturing of LCD and LED television panels to 0 per cent from the current 5 per cent. As a lot of brands have started importing TVs from ASEAN countries under FTA; major brands have stopped manufacturing televisions in India. This has impacted the Make in India initiative to a larger extent, close to which 1 million TV units have already been imported this year under FTA.”

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BUDGET 2019 SANGRAM SINGH CEO, FREECHARGE “In the near future, digital channels of engagement such as digital payments, money transfers, consumer lending will continue to grow. To strengthen this growth, we hope the budget can encourage the upgradation of digital infrastructure and digital literacy - especially in small towns and rural India, which will help drive financial inclusion through digitisation. Some of the recent initiatives such as UPI 2.0 and tokenisation provide a good opportunity for banks, e-wallets, and other players in the fintech sphere to promote digital adoption. The fintech players should continue to focus on innovation, adding smart offerings to provide relevant and personalized customer experiences and strengthening the digital payments ecosystem in the country.”

ALOK DUBEY, CFO, ACER INDIA “For the year 2019, we are optimistic that this year, the union budget will focus more on Digital India initiative in order to shape the IT infrastructure and increase adoption of technology to encourage digitization. Last year, the budget did not really see any major inclusions for the IT sector. We also, feel that slashing of corporate taxes will help the larger companies and help Indian entities to compete globally and attract more investment to the country. In addition to this, it would be great to see the budget focusing on lowering the personal income tax slabs, and tax saving schemes which would lead to higher disposable income and directly benefit the normal taxpayer.”

P VENKATESH, DIRECTOR – MAVERIC SYSTEMS “India is becoming a growing hub for home grown start-ups. This is across some vital industries like Health care, Logistics, Power and Finance. In order to encourage that, the following can be done: A. Remove the Angel tax; if it cannot be abolished for whatever the reasons, bring down the tax to 10% from the current 30%; also clarify the valuation method to be applied in this which is free of ambiguity.

B. Provide tax credits for failed ventures at twice the investment; encouraging shift in investment to early stage ventures is a critical need at the moment and this would certainly enable a quick decision making on the venture and also provide relief for entrepreneurs who may have to hold the strain of the drained investment in a failed venture to recoup and probably re-try some other venture.

C. Channel a part of the Research and development spend of the government to this sector and thereby encouraging new start-ups.”

VIPUL SINGH, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, AARAV UNMANNED SYSTEMS “The government should have special attention on small scale manufacturing industry including start-ups which are making unique hardware products in India. Ministry of Civil Aviation has done a fantastic job by bring a very pragmatic drone regulation and has gone further to even put down a 10 year roadmap for the Industry. Since the drone Industry in India is very small and mostly run by very small start-ups, govt. should announce Special Drone VC fund, R&D grants, tax exemptions, export benefits and infrastructure development grants for start-ups and SMEs to help the domestic industry grow faster than the global counterparts and serve not only the domestic market but the global market.”

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RAHUL AGARWAL, CEO AND MD - LENOVO INDIA ‘’This year’s budget should focus on strengthening long-term macroeconomic parameters rather than taking a populist route as it is the year of elections. There is also a need to start rationalizing the corporate tax slabs. Simultaneously, more efforts need to be made to push initiatives by the government such as Make in India. This can be done by strengthening existing manufacturing facilities so that capacity utilization increases. For example, PC manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell, HP, etc. are only utilizing 25-30% of their capacities. If it is expanded, it will create more jobs too.

Definite focus should also be laid on exports if we want to make India the next manufacturing hub while within the country there is need for genuine and significant outlay for smart cities and urban infrastructure."

SUMESH MENON CO-FOUNDER & CEO, WOO “After the success of Start-up India scheme by Modi Government, start-up and technology sector has high expectations from budget 2019. Policy regulations like ease of compliance, allocation of more funds for training, research and skill development, tax exemptions for startups will allow entrepreneurs to devote their time, energy and resources to gain success and build upon more innovative ideas. This will in turn help create a more welcoming ecosystem for the industry players wherein our endeavour towards the economy will multiply several folds.”

ANURAG BHATIA, CEO AND HEAD OF INVESTMENTS - MINANCE “Traditionally, the budget during an election year is an ‘interim budget’, with the real one is announced in June-July by the new government. The interim budget has no major policy changes or modifications.

Nothing prevents the government from declaring a full budget and this govt. might take advantage of that. Assuming they do so, here’s what we expect – Its election year and financial prudence will take a back seat, the government has to prove to the people that it has their interest at heart and so the Budget is likely to be populist; with sops for farmers, the middle-class, and small businesses.

The income tax exemption could be raised to 4 lakhs and the 80C limit hiked to 2 lakhs. After the re-introduction of Long-Term Capital Gains Tax last year, this could appease the salaried middleclass."

PRASHANT GUPTA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - SHARDA UNIVERSITY “While the upcoming Budget is crucial for all sectors, it is pivotal for the education sector. We expect to witness a higher allocation towards the education sector and provide useful and elementary education for all in the following budget. The Government must emphasize on education at all levels and rationalize taxes, including e-learning education programs and make them affordable for the masses. More government schemes for the education sector are expected to be introduced in order to provide the benefits to the faculty as well as the masses of the country. Rapid advancement in technology and business models are creating demand for reskilling of the workforce the Government should address this issue in the forthcoming budget."

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BUDGET 2019 M A MANNAN COUNTRY MANAGER – SAARC, CORSAIR "With the implementation of the GST, the industry has flourished a lot; there has been a complete full stop for grey channel market or grey imports. The government is committed to the growth of manufacturing sector and the strides made by 'Digital India', 'Make in India' initiatives. This evolving aspect of the IT industry brings in immense business opportunities, but requires a special attention for its optimal utilization. So, to further encourage the electronics manufacturers and take these initiatives to next level government should roll out new schemes and incentives.

Also, with the fast paced developments in the IT industry, changing consumer buying patterns, variable GST rates for the various sub-parts in consumer goods, the industry is going through a demand-supply-cost gap."

PRASHANTH G J, CEO -TECHNOBIND "I have many expectations from this budget and at the top of it is the Easy Availability of credit, especially to the MSMEs. The last 18 months have been tough with the banks tightening their lines and now in the last 6 months the NBFC scene has compounded the issue. MSMEs want easy availability of credit to sustain and grow their operations.

The other expectation would be that the government would use the budget as a financial tool to boost the Digital India efforts and drive the adoption of Digitization right up to the SME. This will have a huge effect on the economy by not only increasing productivity but giving businesses a step forward to competing in today's modern business environment."

KRISHNA RAJ SHARMA DIRECTOR & CEO - IVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS "It's exciting times doing business in India, which clipped China recently as the fastest growing large economy in the world. It is also set to surpass UK and become the 4th largest in size during the year. Digital and Digital Transformation (DX) are the buzz word across the state and central government and corporate across size and vertical for some time now. Data has indeed become the most valuable IP for both government and corporate for targeted programs with higher impact, faster results and efficient growth. Projects like Digital India and Make in India have promoted manufacturing activities leading to employment creation. Software and Service continue to lead Indian IT focusing on emerging technologies such as Hybrid Cloud, Analytics, IoT, Mobility leveraging on social media. 100+ Smart city initiatives are expected to transform Indian cities with plenty of business opportunity across spectrum.”

RAJARSHI BHATTACHARYYA COUNTRY MANAGER, SUSE “I would wish the government to create policy frameworks that incentivize fresh investment and new business opportunities to transform India into a global manufacturing hub.

The Government's vision of Digital India has come alive and is slowly bridging the digital divide. With initiates like 'Digital India', 'Make in India' and 'Skill India', the government has certainly put India on a Digital Innovation fast track. By 2019 Budget, we would require government to create policy frameworks that incentivize investments from big players in manufacturing locally in India. Creating transparency in Governance and reducing regulatory compliances should be taken into the consideration.”

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TECH TREND 2019

What is in store for the Indian Tech industry in 2019?

India is growing through digital transformation where every size of business is adopting digitalization in everyday work, making their life easy. But the core aspect of today’s every business remains the data. The year 2018 has been a remarkable year in terms of new technology implementations and most importantly digital transformation. Like every other country, the Indian IT industry has also started making convincing strides to new digital businesses. In the coming years, we will see that CIOs will be more focused on building AI strategy and investment plan for their enterprises, if they want to be digitally strong. 2019 will see the most innovative companies showing off truly impactful examples of digital transformation, with many more coming to the market over the next three years. The year 2019 will be dominated

by Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will eventually propel advancements in Internet of Things (IoT) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

But the biggest reform of last year had been the implementation of GDPR and it becoming a global regulation. GDPR brought a higher level of scrutiny than ever before to how organizations collect, store, share and use personal information (including that captured by video surveillance). The crash in Bitcoin value happened to be another significant event that potentially signalled a bubble-bursting moment for crypto currencies.

engineering to mimic behaviour.

Gartner predictsthe Indian Cybersecurity spending to hit US$ 1.7 Billion in 2018.

I. A MORE EFFECTIVE CYBERCRIMINAL UNDERGROUND Cybercriminals are quickly fortifying

Also, cyber-attackswill become much simpler with easy access to technologies.

The availability of modular attack components on the underground market is expected to enable attackers to combine and repurpose established tactics and technologies to achieve new goals.

Security With the growing popularity of future technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, IoT and multi cloud, security is becoming not only a technological asset but a necessity. Integrating security and establishing standards is the critical first step while deploying a new technology.

Cyber attackers will get smarter and use new techniques such as leveraging social

the malware-as-a-service market by aligning to sell modular attack components.

These one-stop shops make it easier for criminals of all experience and skill levels to execute successful attacks. This market consolidation will continue in 2019 and cybercriminal enterprises are expected to flourish as established cyber gangs partner with other top-level services such as money laundering, evasion techniques, and vulnerability exploits.

TILAK RAJ DUA Director General, TAIPA

II. THE DAWN OF ADVERSARIAL AI Anew class of attacks known as ‘DeepAttacks’ is seen emerging, which use AI-generated content to evade AI security controls. Security teams in 2018 observed many examples where researchers used adversarial AI algorithms to fool humans. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 29

TECH TREND 2019 MEDIA PLATFORMS UNDER SIEGE

NITESH GUPTA Director, Optiemus Infracom According to Avast research, 2019 will expect to see DeepAttacks deployed more commonly in an attempt to evade both human detection and smart defences.

The McAfee Labs Threats Predictions Reportalso asserts that artificial intelligence-as-a-service will enable cybercriminals to develop cyber-attacks with increasingly sophisticated evasion techniques.

In addition, bots used to amplify deceitful messaging have already been created and are available for sale on the cybercriminal underground. Following in the footsteps of recent infamous nationstate campaigns to sway public opinion, cybercriminals will likely repurpose bots and leverage social media to extort organizations by threatening their brands.

III. EVOLUTION OF MOBILE THREATS In 2019, well known tactics such as advertising, phishing and fake apps will continue to dominate the mobile threat landscape. Fake apps are the zombies in mobile security, becoming so ubiquitous that they barely even make the headlines as new fake apps pop up to take the place of the ones already flagged for removal.

They will continue to persist as a trend in 2019, exacerbated by fake versions of popular app brands doing their rounds on the Google Play Store.

IV. CLOUD, HOME IOT, AND SOCIAL 30 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

With access to increasingly effective tactics and strategies, bad actors will have the ability to focus their attacks on broader and more complicated targets.

In 2019, cybercriminals are anticipated to target intellectual property, Internet of Things (IoT) in the home and identity credentials via the cloud, digital assistants, and social media platforms, respectively.

The trend toward smart devices will be so pronounced in the coming years that it will become difficult to buy appliances or home electronics that are not connected to the internet.

In 2019, large-scale social media platforms will implement additional measures to protect customer information. However, as the platforms grow in numbers, cybercriminals will be further enticed to focus their resources on attacking the data-rich environments.

High-impact attacks, such as those targeting industrial control systems, have seen success in part due to static password use across environments. Successful social media and other identity platform and edge device breaches will provide the keys to adversaries to launch similar attacks in the future.

V. DATA SECURITY & GDPR Data security is but part of GDPR, though an important one; organisations now have the obligation to notify the regulator within 72h of a data breach being discovered. The complete postbreach process including informing the affected individuals is now well defined and following it part of compliance requirements.

Digital Disruption Over the course of 2018, ‘digital transformation’ has become such a widely used term and much-hyped concept.

Businesses use the latest technology advancements to thrive and survive in this constantly evolving environment, often dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Next-generation innovations like IoT, AI and blockchain are set to have a huge impact in 2019 and beyond, with businesses aspiring to harness these technologies to

VISHAL AGRAWAL MD, Avaya India & SAARC evolve constantly and gain a competitive edge in the digital economy.

I. EVOLUTION OF IOT Customers have adopted IoT in some shape or form so far. Already well-established in many businesses, IoT applications and services are leading the pack in having the greatest positive impact.

And the future looks bright, with 48% of decision makers seeing it as having the most significant impact, ranking above any other emerging technology, in one of our study.While IoT has been consistently on predictions lists in recent years, I believe in 2019, IoT, supported by advanced connectivity solutions such as 5G and LoRaWAN, will continue to go from strength to strength especially in emerging markets such as India.

It has been suggested that since there are too many vulnerabilities and gaps in the security posture for IoT devices, organizations must use the data, metadata, device logs in order to treat IoT devices like any other network device to predict and accurately respond to the available signals.

II. AI & ML TO GO MAINSTREAM AI has recently gained prominence owing to its ability to integrate with technologies like cloud, analytics and security solutions. Further, owing to the rising storage costs and increase in the number of connected devices, AI has now

the coming year is positive, implementing new technologies like blockchain is not without its challenges. In fact, business leaders cited cost as the biggest barrier to integrating new innovations, while security and privacy were also highlighted as major challenges.

Collaboration

ANSHUL RAI CEO and Co-Founder, Happay taken a front seat in an IT set-up. This is further validated by a Gartner forecast that pegs AI-driven business value to reach $3.9 trillion in 2022.

AI has already been adopted by 46% of global businesses in some way.

According to a survey by IBM, there will be improvements seen in “causal modeling” techniques that will push AI from asking "what happened" to asking “what would happen,” based on possible actions.

Furthermore, trust and transparency will continue to drive the AI-conversation.

There will also be increased research into how quantum computing may help scale AI models.

Enterprise machine learning (ML) adoption on the other hand will continue as businesses look to automate pattern detection, prediction and decision making to drive transformational efficiency improvement, competitive differentiation and growth. Infrastructure and tooling will continue to evolve around efforts to streamline and automate the process of building and deploying ML apps at enterprise scale.

III. BLOCKCHAIN finds A NEW LEASE OF LIFE Perhaps one of the most hyped new technologies of the digital era is blockchain. Shared ledgers like blockchain have the potential to enhance security while also boosting efficiency and speed.While the outlook for digital transformation in

“Businesses in 2019 and beyond will focus on adopting solutions that are agile, adaptable, open and scalable, prompting enterprise collaboration players to develop solutions which provide a seamless yet unique experience. As the workforce of today has evolved, businesses will need to adopt technology that is suited for the workforce of tomorrow, enhancing productivity and helping to share information in a secure and seamless manner,” saysVishal Agrawal, Managing Director, Avaya India & SAARC. “As we move forward, we will witness enterprise collaboration players adopting technologies such as AI, ML and blockchain to make

SANGRAM SINGH CEO - Freecharge their products more secure, bring in realtime customer sentiment analysis and provide better overall experiences to their customers.”

To encourage employees share their skills and knowledge at every opportunity, businesses are looking at creating an environment that facilitates and lives up to the expectations of their workforce.

Businesses will need to continue to invest in people-centric collaboration technologies that help workers stay agile and respond or harness every opportunity – wherever they are.

SOME OF THE PREDICTIONS WITH RESPECT TO WORKFORCE TRANSFORMATION ARE • AR/VR, AI, ML bringing more onsite learning and creativity to the workplace Leaps in Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) have been made over the course of 2018 to create more immersive, enhanced visual experiences and as a result there will be increased adoption in the workplace during 2019. Employees will be able to collaborate and create in real-time through AR and VR experiences – bringing everyone into one virtual environment as if they are all physically working together.

Going forward, these technologies will be at the core of every organization’s business strategy.

“Technology today is all pervasive, making digital transformation a reality here and now! This has had a profound impact on the way we work, live and play. Today, AI, ML, Blockchain are not buzzwords but have real-world applications that have redefined how we work, and go about our lives every day. In fact, in the last year alone, we have seen significant deployments of these technologies that have changed how enterprises make decisions, conduct business or enable consumers to engage in experiences that are richer and immersive ushering a whole new paradigm of engagement,” says Rajiv Bhalla, MD, Barco India.

• Collaboration will be much easier 2019 will enhance the ability to quickly grab a colleague based overseas through new collaboration tools that allow us to make video calls and share files in real time. This year we will see advanced collaboration as more enterprises adopt web-based collaboration tools, and device technologies takes advantage of advances in wi-fi connectivity and compute power to get more done, better, faster – together.

• Diverse needs of a multigenerational workforce The workplace today has experienced a growth of millennials joining the ranks, who are eager to learn and grow with the organization. However, the shift can also www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 31

TECH TREND 2019 create challenges. HR leaders are tasked with addressing the concerns of a multigenerational workforce. Flexible or mobile working options can enable employees to avoid commute time and work from home, work on the go, from a customer site or even from home, removing the limitations of a physical workplace. This will boost productivity and also promote an adaptable culture.

• Workforce Revolution According to Vertiv, a workforce aging into retirement and training programs lagging behind the data center and edge evolution are creating staffing challenges for data centers around the globe. This will trigger parallel actions in 2019.

According to Vertiv, organizations in 2019 will begin to change the way they hire data center personnel, moving away from traditional training programs toward more agile, job-specific instruction with an eye toward the edge. Also, there is a high chance for businesses to turn to intelligent systems and machine learning to simplify operations, preserve institutional knowledge, and enable more predictive and efficient service and maintenance.

of new customer focused technology efficiently. This is reflected in the approaches of companies like Freecharge that wants to enhance relevance for its customers and provide exceptional user experience.

“I believe, in 2018, customer adoption has been one of the most important factors that led to multiple players entering into the fintech sector, thereby expanding the scope of the financial ecosystem. In the near future, internet and smart phone penetration will continue to be a significant driver for growth in the fintech domain.

There is a huge potential in lending and investment segments for financial services penetration, considering this is still an underserved space,” says Sangram Singh, CEO, Freecharge.

Telecom Industry According to a report by TAIPA, in the last year, the telecommunications industry added around 40,000 mobile towers with

The Banking & Fintech sector “We will see deeper partnerships between Banks and Fintechs instead of Fintechs running the show independently,” says Anshul Rai, CEO and Co-Founder, Happay.“KYC will get paperless - the digital KYC space will continue to evolve and adjust to new rules. Aadhaar speculation will end. Credit will be the flavour of the season - both consumer credit and commercial credit. We will see more push for digital payments and thus, MDR and Interchange might get regulated further. Bharat QR will get pushed heavily on the acquiring side. Everyone, including the smaller merchants, will go digital faster and be able to enable transactions through QR. Acquiring terminals will increase by 10x because of easy and economical deployment of Bharat QR.” Evolving customer behaviour, increase in demands by end users has put a thrust for players to undergo rapid digital transformations and focus on delivery 32 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

RAJIV BHALLA MD, Barco India around 2 lakh 90 thousand BTSs. The year 2018 witnessed the notification of NDCP 2018 which is an overarching forward looking and reformative comprehensive policy to transform India into a digital society for enabling futuristic technologies such as expansion of 4G, 5G, fiberstation, cloud computing, block chain, M2M, IoT, AI, and VR etc. Further, the year captured other significant developments such as the IBS deployment in government buildings for seamless network connectivity; development of online single window portal by states like Jharkhand, Haryana

GAURAV TIKOO CMO, TRANSSION India and Assam; Supreme Court’s verdict with respect to Aadhaar based KYC and EMF testing of Telecom Towers at specific sites and mergers; acquisitions and consolidations in the industry, to name a few.

According to COAI, if 2017 had been dubbed as the “Year of Mobile”, year 2018 may well be called the “Year of Digital” as it has been a landmark year for the telecom sector. The NDCP 2018 (National Digital Communications Policy), apart from focussing on telecom and digitalisation, aims to create 40 lakh new jobs through relevant skill improvement. The Telecom Commission was also renamed as the Digital Communications Commission, considering the scope of communications had broadened from what it was in the 90s.

“Undoubtedly, the Indian telecommunication sector has undergone a revolutionary transition in the last two decades to become the world’s second largest telecommunication market. As per the government report, the mobile sector’s contribution to GDP which is presently 6.5 percent will increase to 8.2 percent by 2020,” says Tilak Raj Dua, Director General, TAIPA. It is obvious to say that the Digital India and Smart Cities mission can be realized to its true potential only when the infrastructure for ‘last mile’ connectivity has been established. In 2019, the telecom infrastructure industry strongly believes that the future of Indian TowerCos rests on the exponential rise in data traffic and harnessing emerging business

opportunities. Rapid expansions of 4G will drive the increase in tenancy ratio.

Various emerging technologies such as internet of things, machine to machine communication, artificial intelligence and connected devices have led to an increased demand of a robust and scalable infrastructure.

“Going forward, the introduction of 5G services, along with the explosion of internet-of-things/ everything, will bring the need for infrastructure sharing which is expected to emerge as a key trend.The next generation telecom infrastructure will be one of the core pillars in transformation of India into a digital economy. Telecommunication services is a catalyst to empower citizens by providing them with transparent governance and services (education, health, legal, financial and safety) at their fingertips,” adds Tilak Raj. “5G is poised to go live in many cities across the United States and globally in 2019, and we expect next year to really showcase the economic power of the new mobile technology. This is the year apps start to show their real value in the enterprise and industrial space with a host of new IoT, AR/VR, digital twins and connected-car applications coming to life,” comments Sriram T. V, Director of Consulting & Business Development at Juniper Networks, India and SAARC. Also, with 5G comes the rise in IoT and on-the-go video and content streaming.

As digital subscriptions increase, service providers in India are focusing on digital subscriber lines and/or Fiber-to-the-home access to deliver higher quality content to their customers. Partnerships with OTT players and content companies are also expected to grow as service providers in India continue to identify new revenue streams.

2018 also saw the smartphone industry maintaining double-digit growth fuelled by domestic consumption. Make in India uptake continued to be high in 2018, further cementing our position as world’s second largest producer of smartphones.

However, as pointed out by Nitesh Gupta, Director, Optiemus Infracom, Design, Research and Development

continue to be the weak spots, and should be a focus area for the industry. “We already have the talent pool to capture the R&D space, and it’s time to put serious investments behind it,” he says.

Nitesh further adds, “Besides Security too needs to be a focus area in 2019 given the amount of sensitive data stored in smartphones. With more focus on external features like Cameras, Sensors and Design, customer privacy and data security seems to take a backseat, which is a disturbing reality. This factor should be looked into.”

Speaking about the key Smartphone technology trends for 2019, Gaurav Tikoo, CMO, TRANSSION India said, “The Indian smartphone industry is going through a paradigm shift and the players emerging victorious will hold the capability

VENKAT KRISHNAPUR VP of Engineering and MD, McAfee India of serving the diversities. Diversity by way of catering to the lowest strata of firsttime smartphone users, and by providing the best of experience to users who are in pursuit of entering the premium segment.

The 7-15K category will deliver maximum contribution in 2019, thus making it the segment that smartphone players will place their bets on.”

He further adds, “Come 2019, AIenabled cameras will take the driver's seat in India’s vibrant market - a market that is amplifying its focus towards improving smartphone camera technology.

According to our study, Indian consumers prefer pictures that are brighter, smoother and incredibly reflective of the true Indian skin tone. AI-enabled cameras will soon

become a “must-have” feature in the midrange and under 10K segments. Artificial Intelligence led camera features like AutoScene detection, beauty mode, and face unlock will witness further refinement, thus boosting their efficiency. Augmented Reality will no longer be a buzzword, and we envision these phones to deliver reallife virtual experiences on-screen and everywhere. 2019 will go beyond dual camera setup and will have multiple camera module as the key trend to look out for.”

Other trends • Rise of voice technologies Over the past couple of years, voicebased technologies have gone mainstream.

Companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple are continuously investing in voice and speech recognition technologies and the increased capabilities that have resulted from this have created significant demand in the market. In the business world, as voice evolves, there’s an increased interest in voice technologies in industries such as BFSI and hospitality – among others – and this will only increase as more use cases become apparent.

“Voice represents a great opportunity to deliver fabulous customer experiences, and Avaya has already started investing in and innovating with voice technologies so that companies can take advantage of this,” says Vishal of Avaya.

Along with voice technologies, Governments across the world are increasingly investing in strengthening and digitizing their emergency services.

Government agencies today receive overwhelming numbers of emergency queries and calls, and responding to all of them in real-time is a growing challenge.

• Automation will be the secret to customer satisfaction In 2019, automation will be the differentiating factor among service providers. This year service providers will fully adopt automated and virtualized cloud platforms that can deploy new services in months. Those who fail to implement automation will find themselves years behind competitors, as end users will find more agility and better service with those who embrace automation. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 33

COVER STORY

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ATAL PENSION YOJANA (APY) Ministry of Finance 9 May 2015 Atal Pension Yojana (previously known as Swavalamban Yojana) is a governmentbacked pension scheme in India targeted at the unorganized sector. The scheme is targeted to the private unorganized sector and is open to all Indian citizens between the age of 18 to 40 years.

PRADHAN MANTRI AWAS YOJANA (PMAY) Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs 25 June 2015 The scheme envisages the vision of housing for all by the year 2022. Under this scheme, interest subsidy on purchase, construction, extension, improvement of house is provided to customers belonging to Economical Weaker Section, Lower Income Group, Middle Income Group.

PRADHAN MANTRI SUKANYA SAMRIDDHI YOJANA (PMSSY) Ministry of Women and Development 22 Jan 2015

Child

The scheme launched as a part of the “BetiBachao, BetiPadhao� campaign targeted at the parents of girl children.

The scheme encourages parents to build a fund for the future education and marriage expenses for their female child.

DIGILOCKER Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology 01 July 2015 The service is aimed towards reducing the need to carry physical documents, and is part of the Narendra Modi-led government's Digital India initiative. It is has been designed to reduce the administrative overhead of government departments and agencies created due to paper work.

PRADHAN MANTRI FASAL BIMA YOJANA (PMFBY) Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare 11 Oct 2014 Its main objective is to provide insurance cover to rabi and kharif crops and financial support to farmers in case

of damage of crops. It replaced NAIS and MNAIS schemes.

NATIONAL HERITAGE CITY DEVELOPMENT AND AUGMENTATION YOJANA (HRIDAY) Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs 21 Jan 2015 The aim of this scheme is to bring together urban planning, economic growth and heritage conservation in an inclusive manner to preserve the heritage character of each Heritage City. Under HRIDAY 12 cities have been identified for development.

MISSION INDRADHANUSH Ministry of Health & Family Welfare 25 Dec 2014 It aims to immunize all children under the age of 2 years, as well as all pregnant women, against seven vaccine preventable diseases. The diseases being targeted are diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, measles and Hepatitis B.

PRADHAN MANTRI JANDHAN YOJANA (PMJDY) Ministry of Finance 28 Aug 2014 It is a National Mission for Financial Inclusion of all households to ensure access to financial services, namely, Banking/ Savings & Deposit Accounts, Remittance, Credit, Insurance, Pension in an affordable manner.

PRADHAN MANTRI JEEVAN JYOTI BIMA YOJANA (PMJJBY) Ministry of Finance 9 May 2015 Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana is a government backed Life insurance scheme in India. Its main objective is to provide life insurance cover to all Indian citizens.

PRADHAN MANTRI GRAM SINCHAI YOJANA (PMGSY) Ministry of Agriculture &Farmers Welfare www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 35

COVER STORY 01 July 2015 The motive of Pradhan Mantri Gram Sinchai Yojana will be to take irrigation water to each and every agricultural field in the country and boost agricultural yield.

PRADHAN MANTRI MUDRA YOJANA (PMMY) (MUDRA-Micro Units Development and Refinance Agency) Ministry of Finance 8 April 2015 The purpose of MUDRA is to provide funding to the non-corporate small business sector. The small businesses/startups or entrepreneurs can avail loans from Rs. 50 thousand to 10 Lakh to start/grow their business under the three, Shishu, Kishore and Tarun categories of the scheme.

MAKE IN INDIA Ministry of Finance 25 Sept 2014 To encourage national, as well as multinational companies to manufacture their products in India and create jobs and skill enhancement in 25 sectors.

ONE RANK ONE PENSION (OROP) Ministry of Defense NA To provide same pension, for same rank, for same length of service, irrespective of the date of retirement.

PAHAL-DIRECT BENEFITS TRANSFER FOR LPG Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas 01 Jan 2015 This program aims to transfer subsidies directly to the people through their bank accounts. It is hoped that crediting subsidies into bank accounts will reduce leakages, delays, etc.

SOIL HEALTH CARD SCHEME Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare 17 Feb 2015 Under this Scheme, Government issues soil cards to farmers which will carry crop wise recommendations of nutrients and 36 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

fertilizers required for the individual farms to help farmers to improve productivity through judicious use of inputs.

PRADHAN MANTRI UJJWALA YOJANA (PMUY) Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas 1 May 2016 It aims to safeguard the health of women & children by providing free LPG connections to 5 Crore BPL families across the country.

UDEDESHKAAAMNAAGRIK (UDAN) Ministry of Civil Aviation 27 April 2017 UDAN aimed at making air travel affordable & widespread, enabling inclusive job growth and infrastructure development of all regions and states of India and also to connect 70 airports of the country.

PRAKASH PATH – WAY TO LIGHT Ministry of Power 05 Jan 2015 To distribute LED bulbs and decrease the power consumption.

PRADHAN MANTRI SURAKSHA BIMA YOJANA (PMSBY) Ministry of Finance 9 May 2015 Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana is a government-backed accident insurance scheme in India. Its main objective is to provide accidental insurance cover to all Indian citizens.

SANSAD ADARSH GRAM YOJANA (SAGY) Ministry of Rural Development 11 Oct 2014 It focuses on development of model villages called “Adarsh Gram”. The programme was launched by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi on the birth anniversary of Jayaprakash Narayan, on 11 October 2014.

PRADHAN MANTRI GARIB KALYAN YOJANA (PMGKY) Ministry of Social Justice Empowerment 16 Dec 2016

and

A part of the Taxation Laws (Second

Amendment) Act, 2016, the scheme provides an opportunity to declare unaccounted wealth and black money in a confidential manner and avoid prosecution after paying a fine of 50% on the undisclosed income. An additional 25% of the undisclosed income is invested in the scheme which can be refunded after four years, without any interest.

PRADHAN MANTRI JAN AUSHADHI YOJANA (PMJAY) Dept. of Pharmaceuticals, Govt. Of India 1 July 2015 Its aim is to provide quality medicines at affordable prices to the masses through special kendra‟s known as Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Jan Aushadhi Kendra. PMBJK has been set up to provide generic drugs, which are available at lesser prices but are equivalent in quality and efficacy as expensive branded drugs.

SWACHH BHARAT ABHIYAN Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation in Rural areas 2 Oct 2014 To keep the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country's 4,041 statutory cities and towns and its rural areas clean and fulfill Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a clean and hygienic India.

KISAN VIKAS PATRA Ministry of Finance 3 March 2015 (Re-launched) Kisan Vikas Patra is a saving certificate scheme which was first launched in 1988 by India Post. Based on the recommendations of Shayamla Gopinath committee Govt. of India closed the scheme because of its flaws. Its aim is to provide safe and secure investment avenues to the small investors.

PRADHAN MANTRI KAUSHAL VIKAS YOJANA (PMKVY) Ministry of Skill Development Entrepreneurship 16 July 2015

&

To encourage aptitude towards employable skills and to increase working efficiency of probable and existing daily wage earners, by giving monetary awards and rewards and by providing quality training to them.

ROUND ABOUT

George Orwell, Artificial Intelligence and My Predilections!

It appears the whole world is looking at AI as a futuristic digital platform that can bring soccer from drudgery, human errors, subjectivity etc. no matter even if they can make mankind redundant. At least that is what many feel. Is it because the humans are more for leisure centric and less inclined to work?

such line of thinking was that after a lapse of time, the control of the state will erode and people might feel that there is not much of role for a state when every need of the human beings are met.

Students of political science would vouch that the first form of democracy originated in the Greek city states. Those city states were too small and inhabited by equally small number of people. Decisions were taken collectively ascertaining the views of everyone who could express themselves and that way neutral to gender, age and what have you. People used to assemble at an appointed place and each decision that the city state was contemplating to implement would be discussed and finally put to vote possibly by raising hands or by any other methods since ballot boxes, and papers were non existent several years before Christ. That system, history tells us, had worked well.

Those well-tested methods of knowing the minds of the people for every development projects might have been discarded, when population of a city state would have swelled beyond manageable levels or when a neighboring state or a predator from a far flung area would have conquered the city state and disbanded the democratic system and resorted to dictatorship, where rights of the conquered were seldom respected or even heard.

I am going to dwell on how AI is going to impact politics or electoral process.

Could AI be the sole arbitrator to decide for a state what to do and what should not be done? I understand that there over 160 countries in the world and every landmass call itself as a country has a government either elected or monarchy or in the form of dictatorship. Let us look at every state from the smallest to the biggest, infant democracies to oldest and strongest democracies. One striking thing that you would find is allegations and counter allegations on how the election process was manipulated, election rigging and in some places bloody feud let loose in the aftermath of elections. In some places, elections were postponed and countermanded for one reason or other. Yet, trillions of dollars are spent for conducting elections. In places where there is a possibility of rigging there, United Nations appoint neutral observers. Yet there are increasing number of complaints about manipulations and rigging. It could be just allegations without much substance.

Yet, these unsavory developments mar the civic life, not to speak about scores of people who are killed in the election related violence and billions worth property that are damaged in the process.

The other thought that influenced me for dwelling on the subject matter was about Marxian concept of “withering away of the state”. Let me make it clear that I am not going to dwell on anything politics and that way one should not think I am going to hail George Orwell’s “1984”, which explains how state would become omnipresent in a totalitarian regime. Karl Marx, the greatest thinker and revolutionary of his time, said that the state will wither away. The idea behind

Assume for a while all political systems across the world are disbanded and every country has been given a central monitoring system enabled by artificial intelligence. Every person across the world is given a mobile phone with a lot of Apps embedded in it. The central monitoring system asks you to give your preference for implementation of a project. People need to click in the mobile and communicate their preference, which will be received at the central monitoring

system. After elaborate data mining, the central system will take a call whether the project should be implemented or not.

In this dispensation, you do not need an elected representative to voice your concern in the Parliament, assembly or any such representative body. A citizen is in direct connect with the decision maker and his vote counts for taking every decision. All those functions would be carried out by the digital platforms which will have a central processing apparatus and connected devices such as internet connections and mobile phones. Why then should we have elected governments, which are generally perceived as a drain on resources, since every country is spending huge resources not only for conducting elections but also upkeep of elected representatives?

Do my predilections have any parallel with Orwellian narration? Is AI that I am advocating is similar to the command system that Orwell has abhorred? To my great disappointment, I found out that the supreme power of technology that I am advocating is in a way similar to the omnipresent command economy dubbed

by Orwell. In both the dispensations, human freedom is curtailed and power of ingenuity is discounted. Will that do good or bad to the mankind? I believe in technology, its power but it as an aid of human civilization and not a master to own and control it. www.spoindia.org January 2019 | 37

MOVEMENTS Rishi Kumar Shukla appointed as the new CBI Director Rishi Kumar Shukla, former DirectorGeneral of Police of Madhya Pradesh has been appointed as the Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for two years. Shukla has worked as a 1983 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the M.P. cadre.

A committee, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and comprising the Chief Justice of India and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha has chosen Shukla from a panel of several names.

The Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge has however submitted a dissent note on Shukla’s appointment, saying he did not meet the required criteria as he had not worked in any anti-corruption agency. He has also stressed that the criteria decided at the meeting were diluted by adding general investigation experience as experience of investigation of anti-corruption cases.

P K Purwar to be the next BSNL CMD The Department of Personal & Training, Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB) has announced that Pravin Kumar Purwar will be the next Chairman and Managing Director of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), who will commence office from July 1.

Pravin Kumar Purwar will replace Anupam Shrivastava, who has been the CMD of BSNL since January 2015.

Shrivastava will be retiring in June this year. Under the leadership of Shrivastava, BSNL took many initiatives that included a consumer-first approach and has led enterprise businesses to contribute close to 30% of the overall revenue. Purwar was amongst the nine applicants who had applied for the post.

Nandini Paliwal shifted to LBSNAA Ina minor bureaucratic reshuffle in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Nandini Paliwal, 2003 batch AGMUT 38 | January 2019 www.spoindia.org

cadre IAS, has been laterally shifted to Lal Bahadur Shashtri National Academy for Administration (LBSNAA).

Paliwal, 42, originally hails from Uttar Pradesh. She did her MBA from Aligarh Muslim University before getting into IAS. She was in the PMO since May 2016.

Earlier, she worked as director in Delhi Jal Board. Paliwal will join LBSNAA as its deputy director.

Kavitha Padmanabhan appointed as deputy secretary in the PMO Kavitha Padmanabhan, 2006 batch Assam cadre IAS presently working as deputy secretary in the DoPT, has been appointed as deputy secretary in the PMO. Kavitha Padmanabhan, who will be joining as deputy secretary in the PMO, originally belongs to Puducherry. This 38-year-old officer is from Assam cadre and is well versed with four languages — Tamil, English, Hindi and Assamese, according to DoPT records. She did her B.Tech in electronics from Puducherry University. In the state, she served as additional deputy commissioner in Kamrup and Tinsukia districts. She has been with the DoPT since January 2016.

Dr TCA Anant is a new Member at UPSC Dr TCA Anant, former chief statistician of India and ex-secretary in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, took the oath as Member, Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in New Delhi. A PhD from Cornell University and masters in economics from Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Anant served as professor at Delhi School of Economics for more than a decade before joining the government and becoming the country’s chief statistician.

As the chief statistician of India, he was the final authority before releasing the crucial GDP numbers.

Anant also served in a number of expert panels of various ministries and agencies of the Government of India, apart from being in the boards of a number of universities.

Adithya Joshi serving as director in CVC Adithya Joshi, 1995 batch Indian Railway Accounts Service (IRAS) officer is presently serving as director in the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), has been given extension for three months till May 6, 2019. In another development, the government has prematurely repatriated 2004 batch Uttarakhand cadre officer, BVRC Purushotttam, presently working in the department of revenue, to his parent cadre on the ground of personal reasons.

“He may be relieved of his duties immediately with direction to report to his parent cadre", an order issued on January 11, said.

PN Sukul appointed as OSD in National Commission for Minorities PN Sukul, 1982 batch Indian Defence Accounts Service officer, has been appointed as officer on special duty (OSD) in National Commission for Minorities in the rank and pay of additional secretary, Government of India, with immediate effect.

Sukul will take over secretary, NCM, when incumbent J Rama Krishna Rao, 1985 batch Bihar cadre IAS, retires in the end of February.

New secretaries appointedby the government Jaideep Govind, a 1984 batch Madhya Pradesh cadre IAS, has been appointed as special secretary in National Human Right Commission (NHRC).

The government has also given additional charge of the post of secretary, department of animal husbandry, dairying, and fisheries to Sanjay Agarwal, 1984 batch Uttar Pradesh cadre IAS, between January 14 and 20 when incumbent Tarun Shridhar, a 1984 batch Himachal Pradesh cadre IAS, is on leave.

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