QBullet: Jaipur’s Jan Dhan Ignominy, President Mukherjee Vexed
Read the headlines from across the newspapers this morning on The Quint’s newswrap.
1. It Pays to Swipe the Card: Government Pushes Move From Cash to Digital
Signalling a decisive push towards “less cash” and more digital transactions, the Centre on Thursday announced a slew of incentives, including a waiver of service tax on digital payments amounting to less than Rs 2,000, discounts on petrol and diesel purchases, suburban railway tickets and insurance policies bought from state-owned insurance companies through electronic means.
This comes a month after the government announced its decision to cancel the legal tender of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
Among the measures, the Central government departments and Central public sector undertakings will bear the cost of the transaction fees and merchant discount rates (MDR) – charges that are levied on customers on card transactions. There is no end date for these incentives for now, the cost of which will be borne by respective government departments.
(Source: The Indian Express)
2. God's Sake, Do Your Job: President Pranab Mukherjee Targets Opposition
Targeting the Opposition for not letting Parliament function, President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said disruptions amount to “gagging the majority” as it is “only the minority which disrupts” and “the chair has no option, but to adjourn” proceedings.
Stating that the floor of the House is not the place for dharnas for which “streets are still available”, he told parliamentarians “for God’s sake, do your job”.
Delivering the fourth Defence Estates Day lecture on ‘Electoral Reforms for a Stronger Democracy’, Mukherjee, a veteran parliamentarian who became President, said disruption of the House is “totally unacceptable in the parliamentary system”.
(Source: The Indian Express)
3. Making of a Mammoth Tragedy
Former Prime Minister and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh writes about current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, in The Hindu.
It is said that “money is an idea that inspires confidence”. At the stroke of the midnight hour, on 9 November 2016, the confidence of more than a billion Indians was destroyed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that more than 85 per cent of the value of money held in notes of Rs 500 and Rs1,000 was worthless overnight. In one impetuous decision, the Prime Minister has shattered the faith and confidence that hundreds of millions of Indians had reposed in the Government of India to protect them and their money.
The Prime Minister in his address to the nation said, “There comes a time in the history of a country's development when a need is felt for a strong and decisive step,” and propounded two primary reasons for this decision. One was to check “enemies from across the border… using fake currency notes”. The other was to “break the grip of corruption and black money”.
(Source: The Hindu)
4. Pink City Defies Black Money Fight
Guess which city has registered the maximum transactions in Jan Dhan accounts? No, it's not Delhi, Kolkata or even financial capital Mumbai, but Jaipur, which has Rs 47,201 crore in the accounts.
This amounts to 87 percent of the Rs 53,770 crore all-India transactions, in the first two weeks of demonetisation.
The Rajasthan capital has emerged the top centre for filtering old currency from 8-22 November, reveals data from the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), a specialised agency that works under the Finance Ministry to monitor suspicious bank transactions.
Kolkata, with Rs 720 crore deposited in the same period, and Delhi, with Rs 197 crore, follow far, far behind.
(Source: DNA)
5. Flipkart, Ola Look for Govt Protection Against US Rivals That Once Inspired Them
That’s the story of Indian icons Flipkart and Ola, start-ups that went on to become leaders in their respective areas, before looking to government for protection from the same American companies that inspired them, and which, in the case of Flipkart founders, even employed them in the past.
The irony being Flipkart and Ola, running neck-and-neck with Amazon and Uber respectively, are two of the three largest foreign venture capital-backed companies in India.
At a panel discussion on Wednesday, Flipkart chairman Sachin Bansal and Ola chief executive Bhavish Aggarwal said India should protect its start-ups against “foreign” rivals in a similar way that China did with its own in the first decade of the millennium.
(Source: Livemint)
6. Tariff War Begins; Airtel and Idea Take a Leaf out of Jio's Page
The fight for India’s nearly one billion prepaid mobile subscribers has begun with Bharti AirtelBSE 0.85 percent, India’s largest phone company, as well as Idea Cellular announcing ‘free voice’ tariff plans, heralding a fullblown price war as they seek to take on Reliance Jio Infocomm at its own game and prevent the Mukesh Ambani-owned company from poaching their low and mid-end customers.
Both Airtel and Idea have similarly priced plans which bundle free voice calls with 300 MB and 1GB of 4G data at Rs 145 and Rs 148, and Rs 345 and Rs 348 respectively, for a 28-day period. Reliance Jio, at present, offers both data and voice free to its customers and will start charging them for data from 1 April 2017. While the incumbent operators’ 300 MB plans are competitively priced with Jio’s entry-level Rs 149 plan, the new entrant steals a march over them at the next slab as it will offer 2 GB of data for Rs 299 per month.
(Source: The Economic Times)
7. India, US Finalise Major Defence Partner Agreement
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and United States Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter on Thursday finalised India’s designation as a Major Defence Partner of the United States. This was announced in the India-US joint statement on Carter’s visit to New Delhi.
The designation as a Major Defence Partner, the joint statement noted, is a status unique to India and institutionalises the progress made to facilitate defence trade and technology-sharing with India to a level at par with that of the United States’ closest allies and partners, and ensures enduring cooperation into the future.
(Source: The Indian Express)
8. Triple Talaq Misunderstood, but Can't Trump Constitutional Rights: Allahabad HC
Islamic laws on divorce are misinterpreted to give unbridled authority to men, but inflict “tyranny” and suffering on women, the Allahabad High Court observed on Thursday, reigniting the debate on one of India’s most contentious religious issues.
But the court refused to comment on the legality of the practice of triple talaq – under which a man can divorce a woman by uttering the word “talaq” thrice – and said any community’s personal laws cannot override an individual’s constitutional rights.
Justice Suneet Kumar said a view that Muslim men enjoyed “arbitrary and unilateral power” to inflict instant divorce didn’t match with Islamic law.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
9. Many Feared Trapped as Building Collapses in Nanakramguda
More than 10 people of four families are feared trapped under the debris after an under-construction multi-storied building collapsed at Nanakramguda of Gachchibowli at around 9:30 pm on Thursday.
As the news spread, Cyberabad police and teams of GHMC officials rushed to the spot and took up rescue operations.
Two JCB machines were brought to the spot to remove the debris. As it was night and pitch dark, rescue operations could not be taken up immediately on full-scale.
A neighbour told police that majority of the persons living in the building were construction labourers. Cyberabad Police Commissioner Sandeep Shandilya arrived and supervised rescue operations. GHMC officials requested National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) to send teams for help in rescuing those trapped under the debris.
(Source: The Hindu)
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