Chance for India T20 hopefuls to impress

 only your second season in the unforgiving and, often, unrewarding world of domestic cricket. At 20 for two, your team is in a spot of bother. You are up against the might of Mumbai in its backyard. You have to deal with the wiliness of Zaheer Khan, the accuracy of Dhawal Kulkarni and the guile of Pravin Tambe. What do you do?

When Baroda all-rounder Hardik Pandya was confronted with this question at the Wankhede Stadium on March 30, 2014, his riposte was emphatic to say the least. His astonishing counter-attack — 82 off 57 balls — left the domestic giant and its band of supporters stunned to the core on that floodlit evening. Somewhere in the stands, Mumbai Indians coach John Wright knew that the talent scout in him had witnessed something special.

Most of us know of Pandya thanks to his exploits in you know what. But the fact is that the 22-year-old came of age in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, the BCCI-run inter-state T20 tournament, two years ago. Soon, he will be on the plane to Australia!

As the 10th edition of the tournament — it was called the Inter-State T20 Championship from 2006-07 to 2008-09 — gets under way in Nagpur, Vadodara, Cuttack and Kochi on Saturday, the question on many a lip is — how relevant is this poor, malnourished and unglamorous cousin of the Indian Premier League?

Relevant

Haryana coach and former National selector Surendra Bhave offers some perspective. “It is extremely relevant. There isn’t a shadow of a doubt. The format is exciting because it’s not an inter-zone tournament any longer. Yes, the quality of cricket you see in the IPL is two or three notches higher, but a good performance here can get you there,” says the 49-year-old.

“The IPL is a pointer to the talent. It’s not the be all and end all (of Indian cricket). As a selector, I watched the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy with a lot of interest,” adds the Maharashtra stalwart.Bhave’s observations are significant, especially because the ensuing six months are garlanded with T20 tournaments starting with a three-match series in Australia, a three-match rubber against Sri Lanka at home, the Asia Cup and the Big Daddy of them all, the ICC World T20, followed by India’s summer pastime, the IPL.

Even Bengal coach Sairaj Bahutule endorses Bhave’s views. “The boys are upbeat. This is a very important tournament to portray their skills. The selectors are watching; the IPL franchises are watching. It’s a very competitive tournament,” says the yesteryear leg-spinner.

Two days ago, the IPL franchises released a batch of cricketers and the supposed expendables included Yuvraj Singh and Ishant Sharma. You wear the India badge on the chest but might not be considered good enough to be retained by your franchise. How times have changed!

What catches the support staff of the franchises these days are fresh faces, less in star value, but capable of a 15-ball 40. In a tournament like this, they find a fertile field to identify such talents. Not to forget that some IPL discards like Dinesh Karthik will be itching to restore themselves to the auction pool and remind they are worthy of hire.

And with the countdown to the World T20 already begun and announcement of the 30 probables awaited, there is a lot of premium attached to the tournament this year

Challenges on the water front

On the climate front 2016 will be challenging. The year is predicted to have a big El Nino event, the third biggest on record. This warming of the Pacific Ocean waters sends ripples across the world. Though the impact on the Indian monsoon is not directly c-related yet there will be an effect. So, here is a wish-list for water and sanitation for 2016.

Prepared: We will be better prepared for the uncertain monsoon rainfall and make all efforts to harvest and store as much of it as is possible. In the flood-prone areas we will make sure that the plains will be allowed to absorb and manage the spate.

Weather prediction: With a higher density of weather stations and more investments in weather prediction modelling, we will enhance our capacity to become aware of weather anomalies much in advance and will communicate the needed information to farmers and urban residents to be better prepared for water shortages or excess.

Rivers, streams and lakes: We will speed up the process of cleaning up our rivers and surface water bodies.

More and more communities will join in voluntary action to firstly not pollute our rivers and lakes and secondly to spread awareness and clean up our water bodies. They will be sufficiently supported by the government and its institutions to truly make it a mass movement.

Groundwater: We will better understand groundwater at the sub-aquifer level. We will start putting in place systems to share aquifers rather than over-exploit them individually. We will recharge and enhance groundwater storage and draw only lesser than what goes into the aquifer.

We will take steps to ensure that drinking water in all our habitations will be free from fluoride, nitrate, iron, arsenic and any other pollutant which will affect our health.

In urban areas, we will make sure that waste-water and industrial pollution is handled and treated safely, so that they do not end up in the groundwater.

Sanitation: We will clean up our act with solid waste and ensure segregation, composting, recycling and reuse.

Landfills will gradually disappear and villages will not bear the burden of the cities’ detritus management.

Every household will have access to safe sanitation including a toilet. The waste generated from the toilets will be safely treated and reused so as not to pollute the environment or affect health.

Institutions: We will build river basin institutions to plan and manage our rivers so that they flow all the year round with clean water. We will also build the right institutions to manage surface water, groundwater, piped water and waste-water in our cities. These institutions will be appropriated equipped with the right skills and finances and will be accountable to people by being open and transparent in their work.

Access: Each and every individual in the land will have the right to safe water and sanitation for life and for livelihood.

Law: We will build a legal framework which will help manage waters of India as a common pool resource. Laws will be developed to protect our rivers, streams and lakes and groundwater.

Heritage: We will identify and clean up all our wonderful heritage structures around water including ponds, step-wells, wells and springs. We will also preserve our natural heritage as much as the man-made ones.

Forests: The forests and the hills are the mothers of our rivers. We will enhance and protect forests and prevent destruction of trees, wetlands, mangroves and glaciers.

Seas and oceans: They will not become a dump yard for our plastics, garbage and sewage. Our beaches will be clean and available for all to enjoy, wade in and swim.

In 2016 we will become a water-literate society which realises its responsibility to this precious resource and will demand accountability from our governments for its cleaning up. That will be water wisdom

Revive NATGRID with safeguards

The Central government’s decision to revive NATGRID (National Intelligence Grid) is a welcome move in the fight against terrorism, but it calls for caution and nuanced planning in the way it would be structured. According to the existing plan, NATGRID will become a secure centralised database to stream sensitive information from 21 sets of data sources such as banks, credit cards, visa, immigration and train and air travel details, as well as from various intelligence agencies. The database would be accessible to authorised persons from 11 agencies on a case-to-case basis, and only for professional investigations into suspected cases of terrorism. NATGRID was among the ambitious slew of intelligence reforms undertaken in the wake of the Mumbai attacks of November 2008. Like NATGRID, most of these proposed reforms in the security establishment have not fully materialised, yet again serving as a reminder that India’s memory is embarrassingly short.

In a data-driven, digitised world, it would be foolhardy to ignore the power of big data and its potential to provide real time tip-offs and predictive intelligence to deal with the terrorist threat. Over the last two decades or so, during which the post-Cold War chaos resulted in many violent non-state actors setting up shop, the very digital tools that terrorists use have also become great weapons to fight the ideologies of violence. Social media and other platforms have become recruitment sites and propaganda machines for terrorist groups, and formal banking channels are used as much as informal ones to transact terror funding. In those same oceans of information are trends and information that could avert terrorist strikes. However, appreciation of the power of digital databases to tackle terror must be accompanied by deep concern about their possible misuse. The Snowden files are just one pointer to the widespread misuse in recent years of surveillance capabilities to compromise individual privacy and even violate national sovereignty. Increasingly, there is also academic evidence to show that states are applying excessive force and surveillance to tackle terrorism. The NATGRID’s efforts must be placed against these realities before the government rushes into reviving it. When so much sensitive information about individuals is available on a single source, the potential for its misuse would dramatically go up. The poor track record of the Indian security and intelligence agencies on individual privacy and liberty must be kept in mind as the National Democratic Alliance government tries to nurture NATGRID, which has failed to take off despite the aggressive push by the previous United Progressive Alliance government. The overdue initiative to revive NATGRID must therefore be accompanied by action on the even longer-pending need to have effective oversight of intelligence agencies by Parliament or an eminent group.

Government extends tax residency rule deadline

A deadline for comments on the draft guidelines to determine the tax residency of a foreign company has been extended to January 9.

The government felt the need to determine a company’s place of effective management due to lack of detail in the Income Tax Act leading to the possibility of tax avoidance.

“Representations requesting for extension of the last day for submitting comments and suggestions, have been received and considered,” according to a government statement announcing the extension of the deadline for comments on the issue, earlier slated for January 2.

The Place of Effective Management (POEM) of a company, as the concept was called, was introduced in the Finance Act, 2015 to determine the tax residency of a foreign company.

The draft guidelines for what defines a company’s place of effective management, released on December 23, defines the POEM as “a place where key management and commercial decisions that are necessary for the conduct of the business of an entity as a whole are, in substance made.”

“Section 6(3) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, prior to its amendment by the Finance Act, 2015, provided that a company is said to be resident in India in any previous year, if it is an Indian company or if during that year, the control and management of its affairs is situated wholly in India. This allowed tax avoidance opportunities for companies to artificially escape the residential status under these provisions by shifting insignificant or isolated events related with control and management outside India,” according to draft guidelines issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes.

“As per the amendment brought in by the Finance Act, 2015 a foreign company will be regarded as a tax resident of India, if its POEM in that year is in India,” according to a report by Deloitte and CII.

According to the Deloitte report, there is ambiguity around some of the provisions in the guidelines, such as the duration for which a company has India as a place of effective management. “A question may still arise that for a foreign company to be resident in India, is it necessary that the POEM should be situated in India throughout the financial year under consideration or mainly in India.

Similarly, the term “key management and commercial decisions” in the definition of POEM seems to be causing some confusion.

“Unlike, for instance, the UK, India does not define the term ‘key management and commercial decisions’ and therefore these are undefined and subjective.

In the UK, judicial precedents and tax rules lay emphasis on whether directors/officers taking major decisions are independent, are empowered to take these or whether such directors/officers are acting under the influence or direction of shareholders,” Mr.Alex Postma, Leader–Global and EMEIA International Tax Services, EY had said in a note.

Enterprises have become increasingly mobile and technology and connectivity are as important as never before in their global competence. This poses risks that a travelling executive may create significant unforeseen tax burdens in India,” Mr. Postma added in his note.

RBI tells banks to replace defective 1,000-rupee notes

Out of 300 million defective banknotes that were printed in one of the printing presses of government-owned Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India, about 100 million of those notes have hit the market leaving the general public in a tizzy.

About 200 million pieces were transferred to the RBI’s currency chests, some of which was then loaded in banks’ automated teller machines, sources close to the development said.

Currency experts said that the checking of notes is done at the press-level and the banking regulator is not involved with checking each and every banknote.

An RBI spokesperson has confirmed the development and said banks have been asked to replace such notes with the central bank, when found. Banks have also been advised to replace such notes whenever a customer approaches them. The notes are genuine though they are defective, the spokesperson said.

There are four printing presses which print and supply banknotes. These are at Dewas in Madhya Pradesh, Nasik in Maharashtra, Mysore in Karnataka, and Salboni in West Bengal.

The presses in Devas and Nasik are owned by the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India (SPMCIL), a wholly owned company of the Government of India. The printing of the notes in Karnataka and West Bengal are done by the Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran Private Limited (BRBNMPL), a wholly owned subsidiary of RBI.

Sources said the defected notes were printed in the Nashik press while Security Paper Mill of Hoshangabad produced the currency note paper. The security thread was missing in the defective pieces, the sources said. The 1000-rupee notes which was introduced in October 2000, contain a readable, windowed security thread alternately visible on the obverse with the inscriptions ‘Bharat’ (in Hindi), ‘1000’ and ‘RBI’, but totally embedded on the reverse.

As on March 31, 2015, there were 5,612 million Rs 1000 denominated notes in circulation which constitutes 6.7 per cent of the total notes in circulation. In terms of value, Rs 1000 denominated notes constituted 39.3 per cent of the total value of notes in circulation.

Notes of denominations of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 together accounted for approximately 85 per cent of the total value of banknotes in circulation at end- March 2015. Notes of Rs 10 and Rs 100 together accounted for 54 per cent of the volume at end- March 2015, RBI data shows.

ATF price cut lifts aviation stocks

Aviation stocks soared after the government announced a 10 per cent reduction in the prices of Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF).

Stocks of airline companies Jet Airways and Spice Jet surged to their 52-week highs during intra-day trade even as InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which owns and operates IndiGo, hit an all-time high of Rs.1,395.50 before closing at Rs.1,341.75, up 8.73 per cent.

Jet Airways stock, which touched a 52-week high of Rs.778.60, closed at Rs.760.60, up 8.28 per cent. Similarly, SpiceJet stock closed at Rs.82.35, up 9.44 per cent. During intraday, the stock had surged to Rs.85.90. The drop in ATF prices would help the airlines to reduce their operating costs, thereby enabling them to report better performance in this quarter.

“It (the sharp rise in stock prices) is more of trading momentum. Investors were attracted to these stocks as the ATF price drop is really sharp and it will help in improving margins. ATF accounts for 30 per cent of the input costs. So everyone is happy. But the question is for how long will oil or ATF prices remain so low. Nobody is factoring this,” said Ambareesh Baliga, independent stock analyst.

A unique fish species is endangered in Telangana

Indiscriminate fishing may spell doom for Krishna Mystus ( Hemibagrus maydelli ), the king of riverine fishes in the Krishna.

According to a study undertaken by Fisheries Development Officer, Gadwal, B. Laxmappa and Zoology Lecturer, D. Venkata Siva Narayana, the species which is called as ‘Ponduga’ locally, was much in demand since it had a high market value.

The giant fish grows about two metres long and weighs about 70 kg, the biggest freshwater fish, and fetches Rs. 350 a kg. The researchers came to a conclusion after three years of observation along 300 km river stretch in Mahabubnagar district of Telangana state that the fish is found very rarely.

Speaking to The Hindu , Mr. Laxmappa said that though the Krishna mystus was listed in least concerned category of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), its numbers was on the decline now.

During the study between 2012 and 2015, no fish was caught at three points, he said. Among the 15 fishing points they had visited on a regular basis as part of their study, catching it was very rare at six points and at the remaining six places its presence was moderate.

The fishermen from Nagarjunasagar in Nalgonda said that the presence of ‘ponduga’ had been declined largely. A trader from Chinnamunigal village of Nalgonda district, said that he saw over 10 kg of the fish way back in 2002.

The species is considered one of the best fish which was also earlier found in Bheema and Tungabadra, the tributaries of Krishna. The researchers have recommended the State government control fishing during July and August which are its breeding season to conserve it.

Crony connectivity, and Internet for us

If the objective is to connect the whole world to the Internet, then Free Basics by Facebook (previously known as internet.org) is a controversial method to achieve it. The company wants to provide a subset of the Internet free of charge to consumers, with mobile telecom operators bearing the costs of the traffic. Facebook acts as the unpaid gatekeeper of the platform.

This kind of arrangement has come to be called “zero rating” and attracted criticism from Internet civil society groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It argues that the Free Basics scheme has “one unavoidable, inherent flaw: Facebook’s central role, which puts it in a privileged position to monitor its users’ traffic, and allows it to act as gatekeeper (or, depending on the situation, censor)... there is no technical restriction that prevents the company from monitoring and recording the traffic of Free Basics users. Unfortunately, this means there is no guarantee that the good faith promise Facebook has made today to protect Free Basics users’ privacy will be permanent.”

Monopolists vs free market

In India, Internet civil society activists are opposing Facebook’s scheme for additional reasons. While the attempt to introduce new users to the Internet is a good thing, they argue, the scheme risks breaking the network into many smaller ones and skewing the playing field in favour of apps and services that enjoy privileged pricing.

Zero rating in general and Free Basics by Facebook in particular has many defenders among advocates of free markets and capitalism. They argue that if the mobile operator wishes to lose money or cross-subsidise some users at the cost of others, then it should be allowed to do so. Government intervention in pricing usually has bad unintended consequences, and it should be no different in the case of Internet traffic.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has re-engaged in a public consultation seeking submissions on which path it should take: the conservative path of insisting on net neutrality, a laissez-faire approach of non-intervention in the decisions of private firms, or other options in between these two.

What seems to be taken for granted but should really surprise us is that companies and policymakers accept that getting the developing world online requires methods that are different from how the developed countries got there. So, how did the hundreds of millions of people around the world become Internet subscribers? Not because of government schemes, but because they could afford it. They could afford it because market forces — competition — drove prices down to levels that made an Internet connection affordable. Unless government policies get in the way, there is no reason why the same forces will not reduce prices further to make the service affordable to ever more people, with lower disposable incomes.

There is empirical evidence for this: the 980 million mobile phone subscribers in India are able to make phone calls because they can afford the charges. Even after some price capping by TRAI, most mobile telecom operators are doing well. Despite persistent call drops and atrocious customer service, consumers enjoy reasonably good service and the industry as a whole is fairly healthy.

All this happened without a mobile phone operator providing free calls to a limited set of numbers in order to demonstrate the value of mobile phones and to encourage more people to take up subscriptions. Operators did, however, innovate in retailing, launching prepaid packages and recharging these connections. On the flip side, they also cut costs by skimping on customer service, overloading spectrum and sharing tower infrastructure.

Competition is the key

TRAI should reflect on its own success in transforming India from a low teledensity country to a moderately high teledensity one. This happened not due to “no-frills services for poor and developing country users” but by ensuring that market competition is allowed to take its course. There is no reason why mobile Internet services will not become as popular as mobile phone services as long as there is adequate competition.

Therefore, the debate on whether or not to permit zero rating is beside the point. What TRAI ought to be asking is whether there is sufficient competition in its current policy framework. Should it be licensing more telecom operators? Has the government made enough spectrum available so that mobile operators can lower prices and ensure adequate service quality? Are there bottlenecks in the hands of monopolists that raise the costs of service?

The path to achieving the dream of Digital India lies not in foreign companies deciding on what basic services India’s poor ought to access free of charge, but by encouraging ever greater competition and a level playing field. This calls for the regulator to have a hawkish approach towards anti-competitive behaviour by existing market players.

Now, let’s say that the government really wishes to make the Internet affordable to citizens whose incomes are too low to pay for it. There is a good case for this based on positive externalities: that some benefits of an individual’s connection to the Internet accrue to society as a whole. Much like primary education, an Internet connection allows a citizen to participate in the modern economy. Just as society as a whole benefits if all citizens are educated, it benefits if all citizens are connected. To be clear, this is not an argument for the government to run telecom businesses. Rather, it is to say that it is in the public interest for nearly everyone to be connected to the Internet.

Growth as a force multiplier

While it is tempting to provide free or subsidised services — like we do in India for many such things — the best method to achieve this outcome is to raise people’s incomes. If the Indian economy grows at 8 per cent over several years, the income effect will make Internet connections more affordable even if prices do not fall.

In other words, the best scheme to bring the Internet to all involves boosting competition to bring down prices and pursuing economic growth to raise people’s incomes. This is the formula that has worked elsewhere in the world, has worked in India and will continue to work. Schemes like Free Basics by Facebook and Airtel Zero are unnecessary from the perspective of connecting the unconnected.

Now, Facebook is not a charity. So, it probably must have a good explanation to its shareholders why it is spending so much of its time and resources in promoting a good cause. That explanation is likely to go: “more Internet users in the world means more users for Facebook, which we monetise in our usual ways”. It might also hint that being the gatekeeper, however open, of Internet content for hundreds of millions of people will give it a lot more market power. This is important, for as Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist and an early Facebook executive says, the company worries that it will lose out if it does not capture most of the world’s Internet content on its own platform.

TRAI must take a call on whether such business strategies are anti-competitive. But in dealing with the question, the regulator must not allow itself to be persuaded that such schemes are necessary for bringing the Internet to the masses.

Nothing free or basic about it

We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in

The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is also using the generic phrase “free, basic Internet” interchangeably with “Free Basics”, the name it has given its private, proprietary platform. This is in blatant violation of Indian rules on advertising, which forbid generic words being used for brands and products. This is from a company which, in spite of having 125 million Indian subscribers, refuses to be sued in India, claiming to be an American company and therefore outside the purview of Indian law. Nor does it pay any tax in India.

The Free Basics platform is a mildly tweaked rehash of the controversial internet.org that Facebook had floated earlier. Facebook and Reliance, the sixth-largest mobile service provider in the country, have joined hands to offer it as a platform for free data services restricted to a few websites. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has stopped this service for now, pending its public consultation on the subject. Facebook’s campaign is essentially to influence the outcome of such a consultation.

Data as commodity

Evgeny Morozov, one of the most insightful commentators on technology, has written extensively on how Silicon Valley seeks to subvert the state, promising to give the people connectivity, transport and other facilities, if we only hand over our data to them. Instead of people demanding that the state provide access to various services — from drinking water to transport and communications — people are being led to believe that a few capitalists from Silicon Valley will provide all these services. We will have Internet connectivity instead of education, and Uber will provide private taxis, instead of public transport. To paraphrase Marie Antoinette, let the people have cake instead of bread. This is the Internet monopolies’ agenda of hidden and mass-scale privatisation of public services.

By accepting the Silicon Valley model of private services, we pay the Internet monopolies with our data, which can then be monetised. Personal data is the currency of the Internet economy. Data as commodity is the oil of the 21st century. Facebook and Google’s revenue model is based on monetising our personal data and selling it to advertisers. Facebook generates an estimated revenue of nearly $1 billion from its Indian subscribers, on which it pays no tax.

Free Basics is not free, basic Internet as its name appears to imply. It has a version of Facebook, and only a few other websites and services that are willing to partner Facebook’s proprietary platform.

Today, there are nearly 1 billion websites. If we consider that there are 3.5 billion users of the Internet, 1 out of 3.5 such users also offers content or services. The reason that the Internet has become such a powerful force for change in such a short time is precisely because anybody, anywhere, can connect to anybody else, not only to receive, but also to provide content. All that is required is that both sides have access to the Internet.

All this would stop if the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or telecom companies (telcos) are given the right to act as gatekeepers. This is what net neutrality is all about — no ISP or telco can decide what part of the Internet or which websites we can access. Tim Wu, the father of net neutrality, has written that keeping the two sides of the Internet free of gatekeepers is what has given a huge incentive for generating innovation and creating content. This is what has made the Internet, as a platform, so different from other mass communications platforms such as radio and television. Essentially, it has unleashed the creativity of the masses; and it is this creativity we see in the hundreds of millions of active websites.

Facebook’s ads and Mark Zuckerberg’s advertorials talk about education, health and other services being provided by Free Basics, without telling us how on earth we are going to access doctors and medicines through the Internet; or education. It forgets that while English is spoken by only about 12 per cent of the world’s population, 53 per cent of the Internet’s content is English. If Indians need to access education or health services, they need to access it in their languages, and not in English. And no education can succeed without teachers. The Internet is not a substitute for schools and colleges but only a complement, that too if material exists in the languages that the students understand. Similarly, health demands clinics, hospitals and doctors, not a few websites on a private Facebook platform.

Regulate price of data

While the Free Basics platform has connected only 15 million people in different parts of the world, in India, we have had 60 million people join the Internet using mobiles in the last 12 months alone. And this is in spite of the high cost of mobile data charges. There are 300 million mobile broadband users in the country, an increase fuelled by the falling price of smartphones.

In spite of this increase in connectivity, we have another 600 million mobile subscribers who need to be connected to the Internet. Instead of providing Facebook and its few partner websites and calling it “basic” Internet, we need to provide full Internet at prices that people can afford. This is where the regulatory system of the country has to step in. The main barrier to Internet connectivity is the high cost of data services in the country. If we use purchasing power parity as a basis, India has expensive data services compared to most countries. That is the main barrier to Internet penetration. Till now, TRAI has not regulated data tariffs. It is time it addresses the high price of data in the country and not let such prices lead to a completely truncated Internet for the poor.

There are various ways of providing free Internet, or cost-effective Internet, to the low-end subscribers. They could be provided some free data with their data connection, or get some free time slots when the traffic on the network is low. 2G data prices can and should be brought down drastically, as the telcos have already made their investments and recovered costs from the subscribers.

The danger of privileging a private platform such as Free Basics over a public Internet is that it introduces a new kind of digital divide among the people. A large fraction of those who will join such platforms may come to believe that Facebook is indeed the Internet. As Morozov writes, the digital divide today is “about those who can afford not to be stuck in the data clutches of Silicon Valley — counting on public money or their own capital to pay for connectivity — and those who are too poor to resist the tempting offers of Google and Facebook” (“Silicon Valley exploits time and space to extend the frontiers of capitalism”, The Guardian, Nov. 29, 2015). As he points out, the basic delusion Silicon Valley is nurturing is that the power divide will be bridged through Internet connectivity, no matter who provides it or in what form. This is not likely to happen through their platforms.

The British Empire was based on the control of the seas. Today, whoever controls the data oceans controls the global economy. Silicon Valley’s data grab is the new form of colonialism we are witnessing now.

Net neutrality is not an esoteric matter, the concern of only a few netizens. It is fundamental to the world, in which the Internet is a source of knowledge, a means of communication, an artery of commerce. Whoever controls access to the Internet will control our future. This is what the current battle over Facebook’s Free Basics is all about.

Fear of Facebook colonising digital space looms over IT capital

Net neutrality requires Internet be maintained as an open platform on which network providers treat all content, applications and services equally.

Bengaluru, the information technology capital of India, is vehemently opposing social network Facebook’s controversial Internet service as it fears a ‘digital colonisation by the West.’

The people opposing Facebook Internet service, called Free Basics, include startup entrepreneurs, students, activists and tech employees. Most of them are based in Bengaluru, which is home to approximately 3,100 to 4,900 active tech startups and is ranked 15th-best startup ecosystem in the world.

They said India has just woken up to the advantages of mobile Internet and any such splitting will create a ‘have versus have not’s list' in the country.

“At the start of startup India revolution, we cannot have some Indian developers and entrepreneurs blocked by large corporates to access consumer,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of mobile Internet company One97 and mobile payments firm Paytm. “If telecom operators are allowed to split Internet, it will be a near death experience for Indian startup eco system.”

Mr. Sharma is among many tech entrepreneurs and employees, who are venting off their resentment on platforms like Twitter and Medium, a blog-publishing platform.

SaveTheInternet.in, an Indian web petition portal to support the principle of net neutrality in India, is also very actively opposing Free Basics.

Free Basics allows customers to access selected social networks, and services like healthcare, education and job listings from their phones without a data plan. However startup entrepreneurs are opposing the service. They said that it violates net neutrality, a concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.

Net neutrality requires that the Internet be maintained as an open platform, on which network providers treat all content, applications and services equally, without discrimination. This is emphasised by over 60 groups and experts across the world on www.thisisnetneutrality.org.

“The practice of zero rating (toll-free data or sponsored data) is not compatible with this (net neutrality), since it allows companies to act as 'stronger gatekeepers' and discriminate against the open Internet,” said Raman Jit Singh Chima, global policy director at Access Now, an international non-profit, human rights, public policy, and advocacy group dedicated to an open and free Internet.

Free Basics developers can’t innovate on technology without the permission of Facebook, experts said. Telecom operators and Facebook also need to approve services. Entrepreneurs say there is a need for unbiased, equal Internet that treats all developers same.

“No developer should need to take a license or apply to someone to bring new idea to Indians or any one in the world,” said Mr. Sharma of Paytm. He said any segregation of the Internet into fast and slow, free or paid, app or web will undermine Prime Minister Narendra Modi's digital India program.

VoIP

A key aspect of the Internet is that a user can choose to visit any website and access any service. In Free Basics, Facebook has decided voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and video are not good for users, so they will not have them.

Since Google hasn’t signed up as a partner with Facebook, users cannot access it. This also includes any of the billions of websites that haven't partnered with Facebook.

“In sociology, this locus of decision-making ability is called ‘agency’,” said Kiran Jonnalagadda, founder of Bengaluru-based tech community HasGeek and one of the key members of the SaveTheInternet.in campaign.

He said Free Basics shifts ‘agency’ (who has decision making rights) from the end user to Facebook. But India’s constitution guarantees ‘agency’ to each citizen, which is why they have fundamental rights and universal franchise. “Free Basics wants to take it away,” said Mr. Jonnalagadda.

Experts say even more worrying is the fact that Facebook wants this right to take away agency enshrined in law. This is why they’re lobbying Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) so heavily. While Facebook may claim to be benign, once it is legally approved, others will abuse it for private gain, according to the experts.

“This is why we’re calling it ‘Digital Colonialism, the exploitation of resources while denying rights,” said Mr. Jonnalagadda.

He is also of view that Free Basics, like all forms of zero rating, comes from the same school of thought that considers a 'benevolent dictatorship' better than democracy for progress.

“In India we’ve seen this taken to the extreme once with the emergency. We don’t want any further evidence of the harm possible,” said Mr. Jonnalagadda.

Sharad Sharma, co-founder of Bengaluru-based software product think tank iSPIRT said that it is fine for companies to sponsor free access to their Internet in general. “But, consumers should have choice of using any telco provider and still get the benefit,” said Mr. Sharma.

Facebook had earlier collaborated with telecommunications company Reliance Communications to provide its proposed ‘Free Basics’ plan. However, TRAI has told Reliance Communications to delay the launch of Free Basics.

Special deal

Mr. Sharma of iSPIRT said telecos should not have special deal like the partnership between Reliance Communications and Facebook to provide free Internet. “This violates the fundamental net neutrality principle,” he said.

He said companies should pay money, data time or anything else to the consumer directly by using tools like Gigato, a data-sponsoring app. These tools reimburse users for data without violating the net neutrality.

Meanwhile, India also witnessed street-level protests in Gachibowli, a major IT suburb of Hyderabad. The protestors were sitting under a tent and were trying to discredit Facebook’s Free Basics initiative.

The Free Software Movement of India (FSMI) organised protests in several towns across Telangana and Andhra Pradesh with a demand to scrap it.

The members are trying to convince people about their stand through various social media initiatives. They said people who have signed up to support the online campaign of ‘Free Basics’ can reverse their decision by visiting their website 'saynotofreebasics.fsmi.in'

This week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made renewed pitch for its Free Basics Internet service saying it protects net neutrality. Mr.Zuckerberg whose Facebook is spending billions of dollars on projects to deliver Internet to under-served areas using satellites, drones and lasers, appeared on a video to personally promote Free Basics. He also wrote a personal appeal in one of the newspapers.

Maruti to drive Baleno into EU to rev up exports

First shipment of premium hatchback to Europe is expected to commence in January

Maruti Suzuki India, the country’s largest carmaker, is set to commence exports of its Baleno model to the European Union, in its second attempt to revive its presence in the region, according to a company official.

The first shipment of premium hatchback to Europe is expected to commence in January. The company is targeting several markets such Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Spain, among others to sell India-built Baleno, according to a company spokesperson who doesn’t want to be named.

Maruti Suzuki started exports to EU as early as in 1987-88 with about 500 units. But, exports lasted only till 2006-07. It started looking at non-EU markets, which offered huge potential then. The company resumed exports to EU in 2008-09. But, European exports have not been growing since 2010-11. With the new Baleno, the company is hopeful of reviving and growing its exports to EU.

“Since some export markets like Africa and Latin America are facing demand slowdown due to slump in oil and commodity prices, Europe focus for exports will help the company maintain stability in exports,” according to an industry analyst.

The EU export plan is part of Suzuki’s global export strategy.

Suzuki, Maruti’s foreign parent, has also decided to sell made-in-India Baleno in Japan, signalling growing importance of Indian operations in Suzuki’s global growth strategy. Presently, Maruti is the only manufacturer of Baleno for Suzuki.

With strong response to its cars in markets such as Asia, Africa, Latin America & Middle East, Maruti’s overall passenger vehicle exports have been growing. Over 95 per cent of the export volumes are generated from non-EU markets now.

Company officials said that new markets were being identified for growing its exports further and Maruti added many new models such as Ertiga, Swift, DZire, Ciaz, Celerio to the export portfolio. “Markets like Mexico have responded positively to our mid-size sedan Ciaz,” a company spokesperson said.

Neuroscience and the juvenile legislation

Scientific evidence suggests that the parts of the brain responsible for impulse control, decision-making, judgment and emotions, and crucial when fixing culpability in case of juvenile delinquency, keep developing into the twenties.

Earlier this week, the Rajya Sabha cleared the Juvenile Justice (Amendment) Bill that allows juveniles between ages 16 and 18 years who are charged with heinous offences to be tried as adults.

Neuroscience was conspicuously absent from this debate. Globally, juvenile justice policies are increasingly informed by developments in brain science that probe questions of culpability and “blameworthiness” of adolescent offenders. “Capacities relevant to criminal responsibility are still developing when you’re 16 or 17 years old,” psychologist Laurence Steinberg of the American Psychological Association had said while supporting Christopher Simmons, who, as an adolescent, had been convicted of murder — a case that became a landmark judgment in forensic psychiatry, and relied on neuroscience while convicting the juvenile offender.

Much like the juvenile involved in the December 16, 2012 gang rape in New Delhi, Simmons was 17 years old in 1993 when he robbed a woman, tied her up with electrical cable and duct tape, and tossed her over a bridge. When the case went to trial, he was convicted and sentenced to death by a Missouri court in 1994. By 2004, the Simmons case had worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and a year later, in a landmark decision, the court said that it was unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed under the age of 18. The decision relied on neurobiology, developments in brain research to define the “age of understanding”. So, what does science have to say about the Indian government’s decision to allow 16-18 year olds to be tried and sentenced as adults? To put it simply — science does not back the decision.

Age of understanding

As per India’s Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act of 2000, the age of understanding is fixed at 18 years. And so, legally, any individual beyond that age could be held fully responsible for his actions. However, neuro-scientific developments in the past decade prove that brain development continues till the person is well into his twenties.

In 2007, a study conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), U.S., scanned the brains of nearly 1,000 healthy children between ages 3 and 18. Child and adolescent psychiatrist Jay Giedd, who conducted the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans and followed the actual physical changes in the adolescent brain, believes that brain maturation peaks around the age of 25. In a 2005 paper on “Adolescence, Brain Development and Legal Culpability”, Dr. Giedd was quoted as saying, “Part of the brain that is helping organisation, planning and strategising is not done being built yet… It’s sort of unfair to expect [adolescents] to have adult levels of organisational skills or decision-making before their brain is finished being built.”

According to available neuro-scientific data, the frontal lobe, especially the prefrontal cortex, is among the last parts of the brain to fully mature. The frontal lobes are responsible for impulse control, in charge of decision-making, judgment and emotions — and therefore crucial when fixing “culpability” in the case of juvenile delinquency. Further, we now know conclusively that teenagers tend to be impulsive and prone to mood swings because the limbic system — which processes emotions — is still developing.

Preeti Jacob, assistant professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuroscience, Bengaluru, says there is no valid, magic age which can work as a marker to define individuals as juveniles or adults. “Neuroscience has shown that the brain continues to develop well into the third decade of life. The 18 years cut-off is in itself an arbitrary number. Lowering this age further does not have its basis in current science,” she says.

According to experts, adolescents get involved in risk-seeking behaviour without thinking of long-term consequences, which leads them to actually overstate rewards without fully evaluating the risks. This is because the level of dopamine production changes during adolescence. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter — a chemical produced by the brain that helps link actions to rewards and/or punishments.

In defence of leniency

Sumantra Chattarji is a professor of neurobiology at National Centre for Biological Sciences and head of the Centre for Brain Development and Repair at The Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, in Bengaluru. His work has established that under conditions of chronic and severe stress in rats, the prefrontal cortex can shrink by up to 40 per cent resulting in brain cells in this area losing their capacity to process information properly. The hippocampus, which is crucial for forming memories of daily facts and events, is also damaged in a similar fashion.

Thus, the parts of the brain that are crucial for processing information about specific events, and making careful decisions based on them — such as applying the brakes on high-risk behaviour — are severely compromised. On the other hand, the same stress pushes the amygdala, the emotional hub of the brain that is involved in fear, anxiety and aggression, in the opposite direction by making its neurons grow bigger and stronger. Strikingly, MRI imaging shows that similar changes take place in the brains of individuals suffering from stress disorders.

“What this means is that a stressed and damaged brain may lose its ability to control impulsive and risk-seeking behaviour because of a lack of balance between the prefrontal cortex and brain areas it is supposed to control. The ability to remember and reason is also curtailed,” says Dr. Chattarji.

This may be relevant in light of reports that a significant proportion of juveniles committing crimes in India come from economically and socially deprived backgrounds.

In the Indian context, Dr. Rajat Mitra, clinical psychologist and director of Swanchetan — a non-governmental organistaion based in New Delhi providing support to juvenile delinquents among others — says that “complete rehabilitation is very rare”. “It is almost next to nil. Rehabilitation is a well-defined scientific process. The idea is to help the convict gain back his original psychological, physical and social capacity which is impaired as a result of the crime committed,” he says.

Juveniles in conflict with the law are more capable of change given the fact that their brains are still learning. Honest efforts made towards rehabilitation — including visits by a mental health professional three-four times a month — will have a significant positive impact on them. Unfortunately, there is no psychiatric screening in Indian prisons. No mental health professional has met the juvenile convicted in the gang-rape case yet; neither when he was in a reform home for three years nor after release. He was given a one-time financial grant of Rs.10,000 and a sewing machine because the rehabilitation manual says that. “That’s no way to look at rehabilitation,” says Dr. Mitra.

Hoping for a price surge, oil firms keep wells in reserve

Incomplete wells are one of the reasons why oil price recovery is nowhere in sight

The price of oil keeps dropping. But that didn’t stop a work crew from drilling a well recently on what was once a cornfield, carefully guiding the last sections of 13,000 feet of pipe spiralling into the hard Niobrara shale with a diamond-tipped bit.

Their well, one of hundreds drilled by Anadarko Petroleum in eastern Colorado’s Wattenberg field this year, could someday gush as many as 800 barrels of crude oil a day. But Anadarko is not planning to produce a drop of crude from the well for at least another year because the price of oil is now so low.

The well here is just one of more than 4,000 drilled oil and natural gas wells across the country producing nothing, but ready to be tapped quickly.

Many constitute a new form of underground storage, a new well inventory strategy for an industry in distress, one that has been forced to lay off tens of thousands of workers, decommission most of its rigs and write down assets. For individual companies such as Anadarko, the deferred completions — known in the oil business as DUCs (an acronym for drilled but uncompleted) — are a bet on higher oil prices than the current level of about $38 a barrel, which is about 60 per cent lower than in the summer of 2014. They are viewed by oil executives as a way to hoard cash as service costs plummet and are a flexible lever to rapidly increase production whenever oil rises again.

“We are adapting to market conditions,” Moe Felman, the Anadarko Rockies drilling operations manager, said as he watched workers pump drilling fluids and screw pipes together within sight of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains. “We are focused on what we can do to be ready to accelerate when the market returns.”

But the incomplete wells are also another reason many analysts say a recovery in the oil price is nowhere in sight. Together the well backlog could produce as many as 500,000 barrels of oil a day, about the same amount of oil that Iran is expected to add to the glutted global market after it complies with the recent nuclear deal by the end of next year. Some analysts say oil companies such as Anadarko, EOG Resources and Continental Resources may collectively risk suffocating the very price revival they anticipate by releasing abundant new supplies once prices inch up. Others say the eventual impact would be small and short-lived, but since the industry has never used this strategy before, no one can be sure.

“If prices start to creep up in the U.S., a lot of production could come on line in a quick manner that could put pressure on the supply-demand balance in the market,” said Christopher Kopczynski, a senior oil analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consultant firm.

The new strategy is made possible by the shale revolution in Texas, North Dakota and Colorado, which nearly doubled national oil production in six years before the price of oil plunged and production began to wane.

Today, there are 1,300 horizontal wells — typically the most productive drilled in shale fields that will offer the biggest output their first year — that were drilled at least six months ago that remain incomplete in the nation’s major shale oil fields. That is more than three times last year’s average, according to Rystad Energy, a Norwegian consultant firm that tracks world oil fields.

Anadarko, EOG Resources and several other major producers began intentionally warehousing wells and effectively storing oil underground after the price of oil collapsed in late 2014 and early this year in the hope of a quick rebound.

“The reason we have deferred the completions is to really substantially increase the rate of return,” Bill Thomas, EOG’s Chairman and Chief Executive, acknowledged in an investment conference call. “We want to make sure that we allow prices to firm up.”

The price did not rebound, but the economics of drilling and completing wells have changed. As the oil price dropped and drilling crews were let go, the cost of drilling wells fell as much as 30 per cent.

At the same time, those companies that cancelled rig contracts were forced to pay costly severance costs.

On the completion side, fracking crews are easier to come by and their contracts tend to be more fluid. Now those completion costs have also come down — meaning that the uncompleted wells will eventually be brought on line at a lower cost, executives say.

Even if oil prices do not rise substantially, some companies say they will work through much of their warehoused wells in 2016 because with the drilling costs already paid, it will be at least 40 per cent cheaper to complete old wells than drill new ones. That should enable them to keep their production flat or rising even as they further cut their capital expenditures.

But Anadarko remains cautious for 2016.

“Should the commodity price change, we can ramp up,” Darrell E. Hollek, Anadarko’s executive vice president for onshore exploration and production, said in an interview.

“We may find that we complete a lot of these intentionally drilled and uncompleted wells but we may find we only want to do half of them. But from a capital standpoint, it truly is a lever for us.”

World Bank may review India’s GDP forecast

Economic slowdown in Brazil, Russia and China may boost India’s economy

Kaushik Basu, the Chief Economist of the World Bank, indicated that India’s growth forecast may witness ‘some changes’ in the bank’s January review. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has released data indicating growth in the “vicinity of 7.5 per cent” for 2015-16, which is less than what was projected in the last Economic Survey. In this year’s Economic Survey, the Finance Ministry had projected GDP growth of 8.1-8.5 per cent. As of October, the World Bank’s forecast for India was retained at 7.5 per cent for the current financial year.

Prof. Basu, who also was the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India till 2012, said the government’s failure to get the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill passed may have an ‘impact’ on the GDP growth projection of the World Bank. “The detailed decision-making (by the government) can have an impact on the growth rate and that a couple of important decisions did not go through could have an impact.” Prof. Basu said. He, however, also said that economic slowdown in Brazil, Russia and China may boost India’s economy in the coming year.

“This is the first time India is leading major global economies in terms of growth forecast. India is dominating for a couple of reasons. China is growing below 7 per cent, Brazil and Russia are in recession. The general mood is positive for India which is helping the investment climate,” he added. A fall in crude oil prices is also ‘helping’ the economy, he said.

Prof. Basu was in the city to attend a two-day seminar on “Growth in West Bengal” at the Kolkata-based Indian Statistical Institute.