World Economic Forum Award for Shah Rukh Khan 01-11

Shyam's insights :

If I say, I am excited, it will be an understatement.....

If I say, I am ecstatic, it will still be an understatement.....

If I proudly say, India has become Incredible Again, probably it would be a statement closer to reality.
Today, all we need to do is,  celebrate the in-imaginably astounding happening that has made India 'Incredible India' once again.

For the almost past three years, we had got used to being looked down upon by the people of world for our preoccupation with Gau (Cow) violence, Beef Violence, and now the Karni Sena violence.
While the political parties and politicians are busy muddying the beautiful landscape of the country, this event comes as an refreshing cleanser.

These events made even people forget the great economic reforms and progressive policies of P. V. Narasimha Rao, Shri. Vajpayee and Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Amidst all these, one person worked silently and unperturbedly for the upliftment and rehabilitation of women and children, and that effort is being by World Economic Forum.

Thanks Dr. Shah Rukh Khan, for making India INCREDIBLE again, and  for giving us a reason to take pride in our Indian origin.

Congratulations

Now please read the article



The World Economic Forum’s 48th Annual Meeting in Davos will begin later this month, under the theme of “Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World”.

Artists are unique in the ways that they hold up a mirror to society—so that we can see the fractures more clearly, but equally that we can be reminded of our essential shared values.

The 24th Annual Crystal Awards celebrate the achievements of outstanding artists who have shown exemplary commitment to improving the state of the world. We are delighted this year to honor actors and directors Cate Blanchett and Shah Rukh Khan, and musician Sir Elton John. Each of them in their own way has taken action to uphold human dignity.

The awards ceremony will take place on the evening of Monday, January 22, launching the Annual Meeting. It will serve as a marker of the intention of the Meeting and as a reminder to us all of our responsibility to act with respect, generosity and compassion.

Awardees

Cate Blanchett, for her leadership in raising awareness of the refugee crisis
 UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Cate Blanchett visits Syrian refugees in Jordan

Cate Blanchett is an internationally acclaimed award-winning actor and director of both stage and screen. Appointed a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador in 2016, in recognition of her commitment to refugees, she has lent her voice and influence to raising awareness, advocating and fundraising for the UNHCR. Having met refugees in countries including Lebanon, Jordan and her home country, Australia, she advocates for increased solidarity and responsibility sharing for the 65 million-plus displaced people across the world. She has brought her creative skills to bear in sharpening focus on the individual human stories that lie behind the vast numbers.

“As a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, my job is simple: to help connect people to the human stories of those forced to flee, and to state the case for all of us to stand with refugees.”
—Cate Blanchett

Sir Elton John, for his leadership in the fight against HIV/AIDS

Sir Elton John is one of the world’s most successful musical solo artists of all time, whose career has spanned more than five decades. With thirty-five Gold and twenty-five Platinum albums, he has sold more than 250 million records worldwide. In 1992, he established the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), which today is one of the leading non-profit HIV/AIDS organizations. EJAF has raised more than $400 million to date to support hundreds of HIV/AIDS prevention, service and advocacy programmes around the globe. In 1998, HM Queen Elizabeth knighted him Sir Elton John, Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to music and charitable causes. Sir Elton John recently received the Harvard Foundation’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award.
“AIDS is the leading cause of death for women of childbearing age, yet the medicine and know-how exists to prevent this. If we want to give the next generation a better future, we could solve this problem. What it takes is our collective passion and compassion.”
—Sir Elton John

Shah Rukh Khan, for his leadership in championing children’s and women’s rights in India
 
Shah Rukh Khan is one of Bollywood’s most prominent actors who has been at the forefront of the Indian film and television industry for over 30 years. He is the founder of the non‐profit Meer Foundation, which provides support to female victims of acid attacks and major burn injuries through medical treatment, legal aid, vocational training, rehabilitation and livelihood support. He has also been responsible for the creation of specialized children’s hospital wards and has supported childcare centres with free boarding for children undergoing cancer treatment.

“With victims of acid attacks I have had the privilege to witness the unparalleled courage and compassion that women are capable of. I have seen the transformative strength of goodness and the healing power of gentleness.”
—Shah Rukh Khan

Crystal Awardees are part of a community of 40 cultural leaders in Davos “creating a shared future in a fractured world”.


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History of zero pushed back 500 years by ancient Indian text.

The earliest recorded use of zero

The symbol “0” is a familiar sight, but its origins are far from certain. A recent batch of carbon dating is causing the history of mathematics to be rewritten, as it has discovered zeros dating back to a period 500 years before previously seen.

The numbers appear in an ancient Indian text called the Bakhshali manuscript, which consists of 70 leaves of birch bark, filled with mathematics and text in the form of Sanskrit. “It seems to be a training manual for Buddhist monks,” says Marcus du Sautoy at the University of Oxford.

The manuscript was first discovered by a local farmer in 1881, and was named after the village it was found in, in what is now Pakistan. It’s been housed by the University of Oxford’s Bodleian library since 1902.

Now, for the first time, the manuscript has been carbon dated – and this has immediately upturned some commonly held beliefs. It was originally thought that manuscript was from the 9^th century, but the dating methods revealed that the oldest pages are from somewhere between 224 AD and 383 AD.
This means that the manuscript predates a 9th century inscription of zero on the wall of a temple in Gwalior, India, which was previously considered to be the oldest recorded example of a zero.

Across the text there are hundreds of zeros denoted using a dot. It’s this dot that will later evolve to be the symbol with a hole in the middle that we know today. The dot was originally used as a placeholder, like how “0” is used in the number 505 to denote that there are no tens, but was not yet a number in its own right.

The use of zero as a placeholder appeared in several different ancient cultures, such as the ancient Mayans and Babylonians. But only the Indian dot that would eventually go on to gain true number status, first described in 628 AD by the Indian astronomer and mathematician Brahmagupta.
“Some of these ideas that we take for granted had to be dreamt up. Numbers were there to count things, so if there is nothing there why would you need a number?” says du Sautoy. The concept of zero, initially banned as heresy, was eventually allowed for the development of calculus, and underpins the digital age. “The whole of modern technology is built on the idea of something and nothing,” he says.

Dating it had always been tricky because not all of the pages come from the same date, with as many as 500 years between the oldest and youngest pages. “There’s still some mystery about how all of these leaves got collected together,” says du Sautoy.  

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Internet use in India proves desktops are only for Westerners 09-13

The next billion internet users are ditching computers for pocket-friendly phones.
Globally, half of all internet users got online in February 2017 using mobile devices, and over 45% visited the web on desktops during the same time period. In countries like the UK and US, where more than eight in 10 have access to the internet, people got online using phones over a third of the time. In India, the split was leaning heavily toward mobile use: Indians accessed the internet through their mobiles nearly 80% of the time.

“Our research confirms that Indians adore their mobiles for surfing the internet,” Tarak Desai of StatCounter, Mumbai, said. “Internet usage by mobile in India is striking compared to that in most other countries.” Desai attributed part of the success to the latest entrant to India’s $50-billion telecom sector: Reliance Jio. The Mukesh Ambani-led venture lured over 100 million subscribers by offering one gigabyte (GB) a day of free 4G. It also ignited price wars that drove data prices in the country down by nearly 20%.

Besides data, smartphones, too, have become more affordable amid competition. Recently, Chinese brands have won over Indian audiences by manufacturing locally to drive down costs, creating smartphones with bigger screens and an improved user interface, spending heavily on marketing, setting up retail stores, and even adding local language support. At the end of last year, four out of the top five brands of smartphone shipments in the country—Vivo, Xiaomi, Lenovo, and Oppo—were Chinese.

For those reluctant to switch to smartphones, 4G feature phones with long battery lives and simple, easy-to-use designs serve as the online connection. Close to 200 million 4G feature phones are projected to sell in India over the next five years, according to Counterpoint Research.
Data shows that India has clearly leapfrogged the desktop generation. The country holds the title for mobile internet usage among G20 nations. Others like Indonesia and South Africa, where desktops are significantly more expensive than mobile phones and power issues are widespread, are close behind.

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Creating a Pension to Fit the Needs of the Rural Poor 03-25

Pensions are, in a sense, a necessary by-product of a rich economy. But what will it take to sell the idea to the rural poor? Especially when their income (never particularly substantial) is seasonal, increasing at harvest time and with demand in the cities for construction-related labor. What are the inducements that can convince them to invest for a future forced upon them by the changing social structure?

Olivia S. Mitchell, a Wharton professor of business economics and public policy and executive director of the Pension Research Council, and Anita Mukherjee, a professor at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, set out to answer these questions in a research paper titled, “Assessing the Demand for Micropensions among India’s Poor.” They chose India as the subject country because it is an ideal setting to study the market for micropensions, or pension plans designed for low-income individuals; the country’s new pension system is designed to reach informal sector workers. A micropension product — Swavalamban — has been applicable to all citizens in the unorganized sector who have joined the National Pension Scheme since 2011.

This scheme was funded by grants from the government. It has been replaced with the Atal Pension Yojana, in which all subscribing workers below the age of 40 are eligible for pension of up to Rs. 5,000 ($74) per month after turning 60. In the Atal Pension Yojana, for every contribution made to the pension fund, the central government also co-contributes 50% of the total contribution or Rs. 1,000 per annum, whichever is lower, to each eligible subscriber account, for a period of five years. The minimum age of joining the Atal Pension is 18 and the maximum is 40. The age of exit and the start of the pension is 60.

There was a significant need for a pension system in India. “According to the government of India’s Planning Commission (2014), nearly 30% of the country’s 1.2 billion population lives below the poverty line (BPL),” the researchers write. “At the same time, according to the Population Research Bureau, the share of India’s BPL population age 60 or older is expected to increase from 8% in 2010 to 19% in 2050. Many of these older persons work in the unorganized sector and, as such, lack the identification and proof of employment documents required for accessing basic financial services. Nevertheless, current research estimates that about 80 million of these workers are capable of saving for retirement and the untapped savings are in the order of $2 billion.” 

There are other systemic pressures at work. “In India, as in many developing countries, younger adults are moving from rural to urban areas for economic opportunity,” Mitchell and Mukherjee tell Knowledge@Wharton. “Often this means that parents are left behind in the rural areas and, though they may receive financial support from their children, this revolution in traditional family structure can make older people more vulnerable. As a result, older cohorts today may be more interested in a micropension product than they were in the past.”

“Our research shows that individuals broadly preferred a micropension plan that offers withdrawals starting at age 60, as well as partial withdrawals beforehand, to other variants that had different access features.”

Micropension Options

The experiment was conducted in two of the 71 districts in the central Indian state of Uttar Pradesh — Fatehpur and Siddharthnagar. Overall, the statistics are comparable to those of BPL populations. The average survey respondent was 43 years old, owned land, was illiterate and had minimal schooling. The two most common livelihood activities that the respondents engaged in were farming via cultivation of one’s own land (37%), and agricultural labor supplied to non-owned farms (34%). With respect to educational attainment, more than 60% had never attended school, while 21% had five to 10 years of formal schooling. Insurance access among the respondents was low, at 20% of the total sample population. But 66% held a life insurance policy. Saving penetration was relatively high, with 55% having access to a formal saving account. Respondents who had saved had an average balance of Rs. 3,000 in their accounts. 

The study placed the existing pension plan as the baseline. An appropriate information and educational scheme was unfolded for the respondents. They were then asked two sets of questions.

Group 1 was asked about variants 1B, 1C and 1D, and Group 2 was asked about variants 2B, 2C and 2D. The first variant (A) is the basic micropension product that was then being offered by the Indian government. The other variants included early withdrawal (1B), where the eligibility age was 55 instead of 60; a lower matching rate of 50% instead of 100% (1C); no early withdrawal (1D); delayed withdrawal, where the eligibility age was 65 instead of 60 (2B); a higher matching rate of 150% instead of 100% (2C), and option for full withdrawal at age 60 (2D).

“Our research shows that individuals broadly preferred a micropension plan that offers withdrawals starting at age 60, as well as partial withdrawals beforehand, to other variants that had different access features,” say the authors. “This is similar to the micropension currently on offer in India. One exception to this, not surprisingly, is that our respondents preferred an option that boosted government matches to their plan contributions.”

“Previous studies on the financial lives of the poor have documented that their incomes are irregular and highly seasonal. As a result, requiring them to pay significant sums in just a few payments could significantly reduce demand for the pension product.”

The study results included a few small surprises. Respondents were asked to rank their levels of trust in six institutions on a scale of one to five, with a level of one indicating a complete lack of trust and a level of five representing a very high level of trust. Banks topped the list with a score of 4.49. The government clocked in with 4.22, while non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at 2.55 and village councils (3.34) were regarded as relatively less trustworthy. “We do not know for certain why NGOs were less trusted relative to government entities, but it could be because they had a smaller presence in the areas we studied,” say the authors.

These results are informative about whether microfinance institutions or local governments are likely to be successful intermediaries in the micropension product. Since the government was viewed as a trusted entity, having government support for micropensions may have helped boost adoption and contributions, the researchers note.

The faith put in banks is understandable. “For some time, there has been a growing awareness of the benefits of secure banking, even in remote areas of India,” say the authors. “Moreover, technological improvements using audio cues and fingerprinting have helped expand banking to those who cannot read or write. The Jan Dhan Yojana plan was an important vehicle used to include many rural Indian families in the formal banking system. The Indian government’s demonetization policy has also spurred an interest in enhancing poor peoples’ access to banking, as it created cash constraints throughout the economy.”

Pointing out that India’s recent effort to eliminate larger banknotes was intended to crack down on the “shadow” economy,” the authors add: “It has prompted even poor and rural communities to take up mobile payment services. One example is Paytm, a phone-based system for transferring payments from a bank account to cover people’s everyday liquidity needs.”

Growing the Appeal

The paper has some advice for governments or other entities that are developing micropension products. The researchers write that an effective retirement savings device for the poor must take into account cash-flow needs, income seasonality, competing spending priorities and alternative investment options. They note that respondents to the study were among the poorest in their communities and relied heavily on income from agriculture.

“Previous studies on the financial lives of the poor have documented that their incomes are irregular and highly seasonal. As a result, requiring them to pay significant sums in just a few payments could significantly reduce demand for the pension product,” the researchers write. “For this reason, offering frequent opportunities for such individuals to contribute can be critical to the scheme’s success.”

“To grow [the appeal of micropensions], the focus should be on proper investments (inflation is currently around 10%) and policyholder retention.”

The ability to contribute frequently to an agent who makes door-to-door visits could also help explain why people were interested in micropensions even when making fixed deposits at an Indian bank would offer them high annual returns. “Our initial hypothesis in designing this survey experiment was that some respondents would exhibit a preference between early or late eligibility for withdrawal, and that we would be able to identify the heterogeneity driving these decisions,” the researchers write. “Instead, we found that with the exception of the high match variant, respondents were less willing to adopt or contribute to the alternatives to the baseline micropension product.”

Regarding the faith in the government, the authors elaborate: “In our study setting of rural Uttar Pradesh, one of India’s poorest states, individuals receive many benefits from the government such as ration cards for discounted groceries and free health care. We believe that this repeated and positive interaction with the government has engendered the high level of trust we found.” In addition, the country’s largest life insurance company, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, is also state-owned and enjoys a high level of trust. The authors note that the low levels of education and financial literacy found in the communities they studied highlight the need to provide a financial literacy program in conjunction with the micropension. 

“We believe that the move toward digitized finance can facilitate automatic contributions to enhance the appeal of the micropension product in India,” the authors say. “Yet for a micropension plan to work for India’s poor, it must allow policyholders to contribute according to the seasonal incomes they earn while encouraging savings sufficient to provide meaningful support in old age.”

The paper finds that the Indian government’s current micropension product is appealing to the audience it is meant to reach, Mitchell and Mukherjee say. “To grow that appeal, the focus should be on proper investments (inflation is currently around 10%) and policyholder retention,” they add. “The Gates Foundation is also pushing innovations in digital finance [in India] and elsewhere in the developing world, as a means to help the poor do more to save, invest, borrow and mitigate financial risks.”


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India ranks sixth on eight great powers in 2017: magazine 01-27

India is ranked at the sixth spot, behind China and Japan, in a list of eight great powers for the year 2017 by a leading American foreign policy magazine which is topped by the US. The list is topped by the US, whereas Chin and Japan are at tie for being on the second spot. Russia (fourth) and Germany (fifth) are the other two countries ahead of India. Iran is ranked seventh and Israel is on the eighth spot. "Like Japan, India is often overlooked in lists of the world's great powers, but it occupies a rare and enviable position on the world stage," The American Interest magazine said in its latest annual report of eight great powers.

India is the world's largest democracy, home to the second-largest English-speaking population in the world and boasting a diversified and rapidly growing economy, it said. On the geopolitical front, India has many suitors: China, Japan and the United States are all seeking to incorporate India into their preferred Asian security architecture, while the EU and Russia court New Delhi for lucrative trade and defence agreements, it noted. "Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has deftly steered its way among these competing powers while seeking to unleash its potential with modernising economic reforms," it said.

According to the magazine, despite internal problems in the aftermath of demonetisation, and the Pakistan scare, India found its footing elsewhere in 2016. "Long hesitant to pick sides, New Delhi took several clear steps this year to deter a rising and aggressive China, announcing that it would fast-track its defence infrastructure projects in the Indian Ocean, amid fears that China was trying to encircle India with a 'string of pearls'," it said.

"Likewise, Modi explored new naval cooperation with both the US and Japan, and signed a host of defence deals with Russia, France and Israel to modernise the Indian military," it observed. "From the Middle East and East Africa to Southeast Asia, India is making its presence felt in both economics and security policy in ways that traditional great powers like Britain and France only wish they could match," The American interest said.

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The Effects of India's Currency Reform? 'Chaos' Say Analysts 11-29

The Effects of India's Currency Reform? 'Chaos' Say Analysts

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSNOV. 18, 2016, 2:36 A.M. E.S.T.


Image credit : Shyam's Imagination Library

NEW DELHI — The sudden withdrawal of 86 percent of India's currency has left cash in short supply, retail sales stumbling and wholesale markets in turmoil.

That's just the immediate fallout from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise effort to stamp out corruption by making cash hoards in large denomination bills worthless. But what lies ahead could be even worse, some analysts say.

"Basically, you've created chaos," said Steve H. Hanke, an applied economist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a global authority on currency policy. "India is a cash economy. It's not like Europe or the U.S. where everyone is running around with a credit card. That's not the world of India."

"It doesn't look like this thing was thought through at all," he said.

Every day or so, soothing assurances about India's overnight currency reform spill from the offices of top government officials.

"Enough cash is available," Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das said Thursday during a nationally televised press conference, as millions of people waited in hours-long lines. A few days earlier, the finance minister urged patience with what he called "a period of inconvenience."

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But the decision to ban India's highest denomination bills, 500 rupee and 1,000 rupee notes worth about $7.50 and $15, goes far beyond an inconvenience.

India's economy has become one of the world's largest in recent years, but millions of businesses, and hundreds of millions of people, lack bank accounts and use cash to pay for everything from groceries to hospital stays to land purchases.

The shadow economy — countless transactions hidden from the authorities — is believed to amount to about a quarter of the country's gross domestic product.

The government used a similar demonetization in the late 1970s. But it failed to curb corruption, and the underground economy has grown immensely larger since then.

Plenty of Indians do use cash transactions to hide their wealth and avoid taxes — less than 3 percent of the population pays income taxes — and the authorities occasionally arrest businesspeople or corrupt officials with currency hoards that can fill trucks. But plenty more people use cash because of habit, poverty or a lack of easy access to banks.

So instead of just aiming squarely at wealthy tax dodgers, the demonetization is also hammering the poor, the working-class and small business people whose lives have been turned upside down during the transition to new currency notes.

Across India, people are waiting in lines that often form hours before banks open and last well into the afternoon, though the government has limited most withdrawals and currency exchanges to a maximum of $30 a day.

"It is unclear whether this exercise will achieve any lasting results other than having created a national economic crisis, destroying confidence in the national currency and unleashing tremendous suffering for ordinary Indian citizens," Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at HIS Global Insight, said in an email.

"This will have a direct negative effect on retail sales and industrial output during the coming weeks," Biswas said.

A research report this week from the banking giant HSBC predicted that imports of consumer goods would fall, but added that could be offset by a spike in demand for gold, as unsettled Indians look for ways to store their wealth.

In worst-case scenarios, the effects of demonetization could last for years, driving the country into recession and pushing Indians to keep their wealth in more stable currencies, such as the euro or U.S. dollar.

"When you don't trust a currency and you don't trust a government you start using foreign currencies," said Hanke. "That's what this is going to do, I think: People will not trust the rupee."

Raghuram Rajan, the former head of India's central bank and one of the country's most respected economists, warned in 2014 that demonetization programs can easily stumble.

"It's not that easy to flush out black money," he said after a speech, while he was still the country's top banker. He added, "my sense is that the clever find ways" to get around currency overhauls.

Rajan has instead suggested better monitoring of financial transactions, such as using government ID cards to track major purchases, and improved tax enforcement.

Hanke was surprised that India would even try a demonetization program, given that its failure in the 1970s is well-known in currency policy circles.

"They're usually done in some kind of crisis situation and panic," said Hanke, "and they ultimately have all kinds of negative unintended consequences."

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