PLI Schemes Fail To Attract Investments Or Create Jobs; IT Amendment Rules Give Government Upper Hand Online
India grilled on human rights in Geneva, PLI schemes fail to attract investments or create jobs, EWS quota case ‘ADM Jabalpur moment’ for social justice, Ganderbal admin faces heat, pulls heater ban
A newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas | Contributors: MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia, Sushant Singh and Tanweer Alam | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal
Snapshot of the day
November 14, 2022
Pratik Kanjilal
A preliminary estimate of October exports shows a 19% decline from a year earlier. Preliminary monthly trade data, traditionally released in the first week of the following month, excludes some segments and final estimates are typically revised upwards. This month, the Centre has not released preliminary data. Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal discussed the decline in a meeting with export bodies last week.
Last week, speaking at an industry forum, Chief Economic Advisor Ananth Nageswaran gave out details of production-linked incentive schemes, including targeted and achieved investment and employment data. Employment generation is abysmal. Seema Chishti notes that the PLI schemes, even in pharma, where investment came in during the pandemic, failed to produce jobs. “While the amount of investment is 107% of the target… employment generation is a woeful 13%. In mobile phone manufacturing, also cited as good… investment has met 38% of the target, but employment? Just 4% of the government’s targets.” In electronics, investment is just 4.89% of the target, and jobs, 0.39%. “In speciality steel, automobiles and auto components, drone and drone components and advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery sectors, 0% of targets have been met.”
The Supreme Court has fined the Union government Rs 25,000 for failing to file a counter affidavit to a petition by a group of academics seeking guidelines for the search and seizure of electronic devices by investigative agencies. The counter-affidavit has been sought since August, but is in focus because of the recent seizures made by the Delhi Police from the editors of The Wire and the portal’s demand for hash values of the devices and for their cloned copies to be kept at a neutral place.
Who is Nishad Singh? He is under the scanner for financial practices that bankrupted FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. He is said to have lived with the FTX founder, along with nine others. Singh was in the inner circle of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. “Gary Wang (Chief Technology Officer), Nishad and Sam control the code, the exchange’s matching engine, and funds,” a source told IANS.
The construction of a mosque in Ayodhya is expected to be completed by December next year. “We hope to get approval for the map of the proposed mosque, hospital, community kitchen, library and research centre from the Ayodhya Development Authority by the end of this month,” Indo-Islamic Cultural Foundation Trust Secretary Athar Hussain told PTI.
The Uttarakhand Ayurveda and Unani Licensing Authority on Saturday revoked its order banning herbal tycoon Ramdev’s Divya Pharmacy from making five products that the company claimed can treat blood pressure, diabetes, goitre, glaucoma and high cholesterol. On November 9, the state authority had banned the production of BPgrit, Madhugrit, Thyrogrit, Lipidom and Eyegrit Gold tablets. “We issued the previous order hastily and it was an error,” Uttarakhand drug regulator Dr GCN Jangapangi told Hindustan Times. “We should have given time to the company to explain their stand before ordering a ban.”
The BJP has fielded the daughter of a convict in the Naroda Patiya massacre case from Naroda seat of Ahmedabad for the Assembly elections. Payal Kukrani, 30, is daughter of Manoj Kukrani, one of the 16 convicted for the carnage, in which 97 Muslims were killed. An anaesthetist, she is also among the party’s youngest candidates.
Instead of the usual mid-November date, the Winter Session of Parliament is likely to commence in the first week of December in the old building and conclude by the end of the year.
MPs across parties have skipped the Parliamentary Standing Committee meetings after they were reconstituted in September, according to the Lok Sabha website. The BJP, with the largest number of committee members, also accounts for the most absentees. After the reorganisation of 13 Standing Committees of the Lok Sabha, 22 meetings were held from October to November 2022 for selecting subjects to be considered in 2022-23. Only 16 members were present, on average.
For a trenchant summary of the situation on the LAC in Ladakh, watch this short clip from Army Chief Gen Manoj Pande. He acknowledges the ground realities much more clearly than the Modi-Shah duo, who are silent, or Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, who has misled.
And satellite image analyst Damien Symon has a before and after image of the crisis at the border. It isn’t a good advertisement:
Hear Evan Feigenbaum, Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, South Asia, speak on the US’ approach and ideas about the Indo-Pacific, in sharp contrast to the realities on the ground.
The next hearing in Twitter’s lawsuit against the government of India concerning the IT Rules is just two days away, on November 16. “Musk’s decision on whether to continue taking legal action against India’s government could have lasting repercussions, not only for the future of Twitter’s business, but also for freedom of speech in the country often described as the world’s largest democracy,” says TIME magazine.
At the Hindustan Times Summit, Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud said: “We need to re-engineer ourselves as judges.” He sets out his priorities, and how law and justice sometimes are different words ― and worlds.
In an interview to NDTV, Justice UU Lalit, who has just demitted office, said that he would not accept a nomination to the Rajya Sabha or a Raj Bhavan, because it is “not befitting the dignity of a Chief Justice of India”. He also said intriguing things about the circumstances of the government’s appeal against bail for Prof Saibaba.
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