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The Duty Drawback Scheme (DBK) is a key programme to help exporters offset some of the costs accrued during the export process, particularly in supply or value chain. The key benefit of the scheme is that it gives rebates on Customs and Central Excise chargeable on any imported or excisable materials used in the manufacture of goods meant for export. The scheme, administered by the Department of Revenue, has two primary components: All Industry Rate (AIR) and Brand Rate. One way to grant the duty drawback is to check the rates specified in the Schedule of All Industry Rate of Drawback, usually announced on June 1 or three months after the budget. If the product is not mentioned in the AIR schedule or the exporter claims it is inadequate, the exporter can claim duty drawback by applying for Brand Rate fixation. How the scheme worksAIRs are notified by the government in the form of a drawback schedule based on the average quantity and value of inputs and duties (both Customs & Central Excise) borne by export products. The rates are essentially an average based on the assessment of average incidence. These AIRs are recommended by a drawback committee. The AIR may be fixed as a percentage of free on board (FOB) price of export products or as specific rates. FOB is used to indicate whether the seller or the buyer is liable for goods that are damaged or destroyed during shipping. All claims of duty drawback are filed with reference to the tariff items and description of goods given in the schedule. In the case of Brand Rate fixation, an exporter is eligible to apply either where the export product has not been listed in the duty drawback schedule or if the exporter considers that AIR of duty drawback does not fully neutralise the duties suffered by his export product. Exporters are fully compensated for customs, central excise duties and service tax actually incurred by them. To use the Brand Rate route, the entity concerned has to submit an application to the Directorate of Drawback within 30 days of the first shipment, with copies to the relevant authorities. The commissioner-drawback will fix the rate after verification. The documentation requirement is high here, as the manufacturer has to show the quantity of inputs and services used, along with evidence of payment of duties. How to avail refunds under the scheme?Despite the government having simplified the DBK procedure over the years, it still remains complicated for a novice exporter.First, an exporter has to file the shipping bill in an electronic data interchange (EDI) for the export. Here, the exporter has to keep in mind that the electronic shipping bill itself will be treated as the claim for drawback and there is no need to file separate drawback claims. All ports with EDI can process these claims except in respect of DBK claims relating to cases of re-export of imported goods under Section 74 of the Customs Act, 1962.Sribash Dasmohapatra, Executive Director, Plastics Export Promotion Council, talks about a typical standard operating procedure for claiming refunds under DBK: “In the EDI system, exporters are required to open their accounts with a bank that is either nominated by a customs house or has core banking facility to transfer funds through NEFT/ RTGS. This has to be done to enable direct credit of drawback amount to their accounts, obviating the need for issue of cheques. The exporters are required to indicate their account numbers in the declaration form called Annex B, along with the details of the bank through which the export proceeds are to be realised. After the realisation of payment, proof of realisation is to be submitted to the Customs authority.”Key Points to Remember Is the process seamless or cumbersome for a novice exporter? According to Dasmohapatra, claiming a drawback is an easy process compared with other schemes.As an improper filing can lead to claim rejections, there are certain factors an exporter must keep in mind.Mentioning wrong bank details or not updating account details, for instance, can lead to an inadvertent delay of DBK. Similarly, mentioning the incorrect serial number of the drawback claim in the shipping bill will also lead to a delay in DBK. In sum, errors in filling may lead to delay in getting a DBK claim. So exporters must be careful if they want to get their refunds on time.

Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Wednesday demanded a reduction in VAT on the aviation turbine fuel in Madhya Pradesh to attract more flights and improve air connectivity in the state. He was addressing a function virtually from New Delhi for the launch of IndiGo's Gwalior-Indore flight and re-starting of the Indore-Dubai flight. "I have written a letter to all chief ministers in the country to reduce the Value Added Tax (VAT) on ATF (aviation turbine fuel). There are eight-nine states where it is in the range of one to four per cent, and that has resulted in 15 per cent increase in flights from those states," the minister said. He said there are different slabs of VAT applicable on ATF in Madhya Pradesh, ranging from four per cent to 25 per cent. "I request the MP government to bring it down to one to four per cent uniformly for the entire state," Scindia said. The BJP leader further said that in Madhya Pradesh, the VAT is four per cent at Khajuraho, Jabalpur and Gwalior airports while it is 25 per cent at other airports in the state. "I request the state government to reduce it in the range of one to four per cent and make it uniform for the entire state for enhancing flight connectivity and introduction of more flights," he said. "If this happens in Madhya Pradesh and the VAT is uniformly applicable, then I will pursue with the aviation companies, whose representatives are present here (during the function), to start more flights from MP," the minister said. Scindia also requested MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to speed up the allotment of over 2,000 acre land for the expansion of the Indore airport, as demanded by some locals leaders in the state's industrial hub. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and MP Chief Minister Chouhan also addressed the function.

Statistician Pronab Sen analyses the Q1 GDP data. Edited excerpts from his interview to ET Now's Tamanna Inamdar: Tamanna Inamdar: Some are saying 20.1% GDP growth is good, some are calling it great and some are saying it's really nothing much. What is your take?Pronab Sen: At the end of the day, what matters is how much income people in the country have. Essentially, what the current numbers are saying is that in the first quarter of this year Indians as a whole have got much less income than they had in 2019. Do you take that as good news or bad news?Off-hand it looks like bad news, but compared to last year it looks a lot better. But the simple fact of the matter is we have not even gone back to base zero, which is 2019-20.How long before we reach at least pre-pandemic levels? Would you say that we are moving closer towards the pre-pandemic kind of situation?This is difficult to say. Nobody can deny that the government has a huge role to play in terms of the recovery process. Now, those numbers are starting to look a little worrying, because GDP has grown by 20.1% but the production side — the value of goods and services produced — that has grown at only 18%. That is actually pretty low.The remaining two percentage points that we are talking about have essentially come because net indirect taxes — the government’s indirect taxes minus the subsidy it pays — have gone up significantly. And this is compared to 2019, mind you.Now, what we had expected is that during the course of the pandemic the government would actually step up expenditures. It has stepped up expenditures but not to the extent that was permitted by the tax collections. That is something worrying.These figures are being supported by the data that has been put out by the Controller General of Accounts. There we find to our horror that in the first quarter government taxes have gone up by Rs 2 lakh crore compared to 2019, but expenditures have gone up by only Rs 0.5 lakh crore.If the government is not going to support economic growth, then I am afraid we will only limp back. That's because you are then depending entirely on what the private sector will do. And the data from today’s release reinforces that view that both private consumption and private investments are weak.So, we should not expect any dramatic change to happen unless the government steps up to the plate. So far it does not seem to have shown any inclination to do so.

Air pollution is likely to reduce the life expectancy of about 40% of Indians by more than nine years, according to a report released by a U.S. research group on Wednesday.More than 480 million people living in the vast swathes of central, eastern and northern India, including the capital, New Delhi, endure significantly high pollution levels, said the report prepared by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC)."Alarmingly, India's high levels of air pollution have expanded geographically over time," the EPIC report said.For example, air quality has significantly worsened in the western state of Maharashtra and the central state of Madhya Pradesh, it said.Lauding India's National Clean Air Program (NCAP), launched in 2019 to rein in dangerous pollution levels, the EPIC report said "achieving and sustaining" the NCAP goals would raise the country's overall life expectancy by 1.7 years and that of New Delhi 3.1 years.The NCAP aims to reduce pollution in the 102 worst-affected cities by 20%-30% by 2024 by ensuring cuts in industrial emissions and vehicular exhaust, introducing stringent rules for transport fuels and biomass burning and reduce dust pollution. It will also entail better monitoring systems. (https://reut.rs/3sZXYTE)New Delhi was the world's most polluted capital for the third straight year in 2020, according to IQAir, a Swiss group that measures air quality levels based on the concentration of lung-damaging airborne particles known as PM2.5.Last year, New Delhi's 20 million residents, who breathed some of the cleanest air on record in the summer because of coronavirus lockdown curbs, battled toxic air in winter following a sharp increase in farm residue burning in the nearby states of Punjab and Haryana.According to the EPIC's findings, neighbouring Bangladesh could raise average life expectancy by 5.4 years if the country improves air quality to levels recommended by the World Health Organization.To arrive at the life expectancy number, EPIC compared the health of people exposed to different levels of long-term air pollution and applied the results to various places in India and elsewhere.

There is a growing number of companies offering gender-neutral parental leave which encourages men to share child-care duties with partners. While that’s a progressive way of ensuring an equitable balance not only within the organisation but also in personal lives of individuals and the society at large, the moot question is how many men really take such leave?While more men are coming forward to take advantage of such policies, they are still a tiny fraction of the number of men who are eligible for this leave. Most are hesitant to take the leave in one go, and this could stem from the concern that doing so could hamper their career growth.Maternity, paternity, and parental leaveThe Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act of 2017 mandates that organisations must give women 26 weeks of fully paid maternity leave. Some organisations, mostly MNCs, have also begun offering paternity leave, which can range from one week to 24 weeks. A few companies have removed the gender binaries attached to maternity and paternity leaves and offer primary and secondary caregiver leave which determines the quantum of leave that the parent can avail of. Recently, Cyient, a global engineering, manufacturing and digital technology solutions company, announced a gender-neutral parental leave policy. Cyient employees, including birth and adoptive parents of any gender, can take up to 12 weeks of paid time off at full pay following the birth or adoption of their child. Diageo India, too, announced a “Family Leave Policy”, which offers employees a 26-week parental leave, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation.Krishna Bodanapu, MD & CEO, Cyient, says the idea behind offering such a leave was to make parental leave more equitable and inclusive. By offering a gender-neutral parental policy, Cyient wants to encourage men to participate more actively in parenting. “Earlier, I don’t think men took even the one-week paternity leave that was offered to them due to the apprehensions of being disadvantaged at the workplace. This policy is really about equitable parenthood that isn’t restricted by genes, gender, or geography. Only when people start utilising such policies in their true spirit and managers encourage their teams to take time off on becoming a parent is when we achieve inclusion,” says Bodanapu.Parental leave — or work from home?Experts believe most new fathers would like to take time off. But it’s another matter that even while on paternity leave, men may be glued to their phones and laptops for work. Nirmala Menon, CEO, Interweave Consulting, a diversity consulting firm, says: “A few years ago, even if the company offered longer paternity leaves, most dads didn’t use it fully. It would be interesting to see how many men use it fully now. With more women working and in nuclear homes, it is a clear expectation that their partners will contribute equally. My guess is that while women will use maternity leave at one stretch, men are more likely to take it in installments.”In several companies the parental leave can be availed by new fathers anytime within a year of becoming a parent. In Diageo India, the policy is applicable to all new parents, and can be availed by new fathers anytime within 12 months of the birth/ adoption of the child, thereby allowing the mother to better manage her career as well as other priorities. This is key as studies have revealed that such policies aid women workers in their careers. Maternity and child care are key reasons why women drop off the workforce, and if organisations want to retain their women talent to improve gender diversity, enabling men to take the time off and share child care responsibilities would be crucial.Encouraging engaged parentingSujaya Banerjee, CEO, Capstone People Consulting, says through such flexible policies, organisations are attempting to challenge conventional norms associated with motherhood, such as only women can be the primary-caregiver. “Most organisations claim that men, on being eligible, are availing this benefit but there are some organisations that say it is seldom used even if the policy exists. Overall 80-90% of eligible male employees do use the policy and the benefits offered so it appears its usage has certainly increased in recent years. Paternity leave is also mostly availed in a staggered manner after the birth/ adoption of the child,” says Banerjee.On why it’s important for organisations to encourage male employees to take the requisite parental leave offered to them, Bodanapu talks about both the implicit and the explicit here. “The explicit is really to encourage people to take the leave and tell them it’s the right thing to do. But it’s also implicit. For example, if somebody takes paternity leave in a particular year, it shouldn’t go against them when it comes to annual ratings. Because, otherwise, they’re going to be at a disadvantage as their productive hours could be lower. It is, therefore, quite important that those root causes are removed. These are the things that we are trying to address because the policy in itself is futile unless people believe it,” he says.Cyient is working on several activities, starting from raising awareness about the policy itself to advocate the benefits of the policy. Similar worries occupy the minds of women when they proceed on maternity leave. Progressive organisations have made amends to ensure women employees are rated on their performance on a pro rata basis.There is another reason why a growingnumber of organisations are offering better parental leave policies. The younger generation would join organisations that offer such leaves so that they can actively participate in important life stages, such as becoming a parent. “I have not only seen men taking this leave more easily than before but also making career choices to not compromise the quality of the experience. They are eager for their companies and jobs to allow them the flexibility to be the engaged dads they aspire to be. It is not the norm yet, but there are many young men that are setting new rules,” says Menon. Not only will this become a matter of new generation talent attraction and retention for an organisation, when visibly successful men take time off for parenting purposes, the current association of care being a “feminine” activity will begin to erode and companies would do well to promote them as role models, says Menon.As parental leave gains more acceptance, the goal posts for attaining gender diversity at work would perhaps begin to emerge out of the haze.

High premiums are a big reason why many people did not get a home insurance policy. Which is why in January 2021, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) issued guidelines for the issuance of a standard house insurance policy called Bharat Griha Raksha (BGR) meant to cover residential properties at affordable premiums. The insurance regulator mandated all general insurance companies to offer this standard insurance policy and as a result, most insurers have started offering this insurance cover from April 1, 2021. Here is a look at the features of the Bharat Griha Raksha insurance cover and whether you should get it. What is insured under the policy? Actual damage: According to the IRDAI guidelines, the common damages that are covered under the Bharat Griha Raksha include fire, explosion or Implosion, lightning, earthquake, volcanic eruption, or other convulsions of nature, storm, cyclone, typhoon, tempest, hurricane, tornado, tsunami, flood and Inundation, landslide, rockslide, bush fire, forest fire and jungle fire. The policy also covers damage caused by impact of or collision caused by any external physical objects such as vehicles, falling trees, aircraft, walls etc. Apart from these, the policy covers any physical loss or damage, or destruction caused to the insured property by theft within 7 days from the occurrence of and proximately caused by any of the insured events. Associated costs: Besides the actual damage, the policy covers many associated costs which often occur in case of a major damage. It pays up to 2% of the claim amount for reasonable costs of removing debris from the site. "The policy pays up to 5% of the claim amount as the reasonable fees of the architect, surveyor, consulting engineer. Further, the policy also pays for Loss of Rent and Rent for Alternative Accommodation when the home structure is not appropriate for living due to physical loss," says Pallavi Roy, Executive Vice President (Product Development), IFFCO Tokio General Insurance. Man-made disasters: Some man-made disasters are also covered under this policy which includes riots, strikes, malicious damages, acts of terrorism and missile testing operations. "Earlier, home protection fell under the umbrella of SFSP Policy which had terrorism as an optional coverage. With the launch of the BGR product, which is solely dedicated for Home Protection, terrorism has become an inbuilt coverage within the product," says Roy. Default coverage of home contents unless opted outIn many cases, any damage to the house mostly results in damage to the contents inside the property as well. BGR offers automatic coverage for the contents. The sum insured for general home contents is automatically taken as 20% of the sum insured of the home building which is capped at Rs 10 lakh if the home building is covered. If a policyholder does not want this feature, he has the option to opt out as recorded choice. Optional coverIn addition to the basic cover and in-built covers, Bharat Griha Raksha offers two optional covers, namely, (1) Cover for Valuable Contents on Agreed Value Basis (under Home Contents cover) and (2) Personal Accident cover for insured and spouse where insured peril causes damages to home building and/or home contents and also results in the death of either or both of them. If the value of such articles in your home are of significant value you can give the details and opt for higher home content coverage. “If you wish to insure valuable contents like jewellery and ornaments, you can do so by opting add on cover for this,” says Rishad Manekia, Founder and MD, Kairos Capital a SEBI registered investment advisor. "This cover can increase if you opt for a higher sum insured for home contents and declare the details. A valuation certificate must be submitted if the sum insured for valuable content exceeds Rs 5 lakh and/or an individual item value exceeds Rs 1 lakh," says Subramanyam Brahmajosyula, Head – Product development, SBI General Insurance. Optional cover for valuable contents on agreed value basis is available on declaration of the details and submission of a valuation certificate. "Valuables such as jewellery, silverware, paintings, works of art can be covered on agreed value basis," says Roy. However, if the opted sum insured is not more than Rs 5 lakh there is no requirement of submission of valuation certificate. The additional premium for these add-ons cannot exceed 50% of the base premium for BGR. Let us now look at the features of the policy as per the IRDAI guidelines. Key features Higher sum insured coverageRather than the market value, the coverage under this policy takes into account the cost which will be incurred in reinstating or replacing the covered items. "Under Bharat Griha Raksha policy there is a mechanism where one can arrive at sum insured. The details of the policy states that for residential structure of policyholders home including fittings and fixtures--carpet area of the structure in square metres multiplied by rate of cost of construction at the policy commencement date shall be taken to compute sum insured," says Rakesh Goyal, Director, Probus Insurance. The sum insured can be higher than this value but not lower. "The rate of cost of construction is the prevailing rate of cost of construction of policyholder’s home building at the start of the policy. While for additional structures--the amount that is based on the prevailing rate of cost of construction at the policy commencement date," adds Goyal. Affordable premiumUnder BGR many insurers are offering the coverage at affordable rates. For instance, you can get Rs 1 crore sum insured at an annual premium of Rs 2,466 from Digit, which effective means an annual premium Rs 247 for each Rs 1 lakh of sum insured. Over the period of 10 years you spend Rs 24,660 to for a protection of Rs 1 crore. Premiums for Rs 1 crore cover under Bharat Griha Raksha Insurer Annual Premium* New India Assurance Rs 3,000 Bajaj Allianz Rs 2,714 Cholamandalam Rs 4,180 Digit Rs 2,466 ICICI Lombard Rs 4,072 *Including GST; Source: PolicyBazaar.Com Advantage of no underinsuranceUnderinsurance does not apply to this product, a special feature of this policy. “This is a unique feature of this policy. It basically means that if the sum insured, which is calculated on the basis of the information that you have provided to the insurer, is less than the actual value at risk, then the difference will not affect the amount payable,” says Brahmajosyula. For instance, say the area of your home building is 100 sq.m and the rate of cost of construction for the city is Rs 15,000 per sq.m. By mistake, you have declared an area of 90 sq.m., and your home building is insured for Rs 13.5 lakh instead of Rs 15 lakh. If there is a loss that requires repairs that costs you Rs 5 lakh, then the insurance company will pay you Rs 5 lakh. Annual escalation of sum insured benefit in long term policyThe cost of replacement of building construction rises with time due to inflation which means that constructing the house 10 years later would be multiple times of what the cost is today. To address this issue BGR policy comes with an auto escalation feature under which the sum insured amount is raised annually. "For long term policy, say 10 years for example, 10% automatic annual increase feature is present. What this is that under a 10-year policy, the sum insured will double itself by the time the policy period gets over (10% increase every year)," says Tarun Mathur, CBO-GI, Policybazaar.com. Being an inbuilt feature this will not cost extra premium for the policyholders in future. "The escalation of 10% Sum insured every year is one of the worthy features of this standardised policy. Here the Sum Insured increases automatically, during the Policy Period by 10% per annum on each policy anniversary without any extra premium for a maximum of 100% of the Sum Insured," says Roy. Daily escalation for annual policyPrice rise is a phenomenon that not only happens annually but gradually. To give benefit of higher cost with passage of time within one policy year, the BGR offers daily escalation of sum insured. For an annual policy, the sum insured is automatically increased each day by an amount representing 1/365th of 10% of sum insured at the Policy Commencement Date. What is excluded?While the policy covers most of the common damages, however, there are certain damages that are not covered. Damages in the exclusions list include loss, damage or destruction to any electrical/electronic machine, apparatus, fixture, or fitting by over-running, excessive pressure, short circuiting, arcing, self-heating or leakage of electricity from whatever cause (lightning included). This exclusion applies only to the particular machine so lost, damaged or destroyed. Should you buy?A standard home insurance product simplifies the coverage which makes it simple for a policyholder to understand. Standardisation also compels the insurers to offer very competitive premiums. With most of the features being the same across insurers it is easier to compare the premiums and select a policy of your choice. Prudent financial planning requires one to get financial protection for valuable assets and this policy offers a good way of getting this protection at an affordable rate. “Anyone who owns a house can consider buying this policy. Even a tenant can take this policy to cover against the possible loss to general content in the house because of natural calamities, fire or theft. Given the nominal premium of such policies, it’s a good way to transfer your risk to the insurance companies, especially for those who live in hilly areas, flood zones or a high seismic hazard zone and so on,” says Manekia.

Chinese pupils returned to school Wednesday with new textbooks peppered with "Xi Jinping thought", as the Communist Party aims to extend his personality cult to children as young as seven and rear a new generation of patriots.The education ministry has said it will incorporate Xi's vaguely defined political ideology into the national curriculum, from primary schools to graduate programmes, at the start of the new school year on Wednesday.Primary school teachers must "plant the seeds of loving the party, the country and socialism in young hearts", according to a government notice on the new curriculum.The new school books are decorated with the president's pithy quotes and images of his smiling face, with elementary school students served up chapters on the achievements of Chinese civilisation and the Communist Party's role in poverty alleviation and fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.Lessons are interspersed with quotes from Xi on patriotism and duty, as well as anecdotes of his meetings with ordinary citizens."Grandpa Xi Jinping is very busy with work, but no matter how busy he is, he still joins our activities and cares about our growth," one textbook says.Xi's thought, which encompasses 14 principles including "absolute Party leadership" over the military and "improving living standards through development".It was enshrined in the constitution during a 2018 legislative meeting that abolished term limits and paved the way for him to rule indefinitely.The principles are now cited regularly by officials in wildly varying contexts from fighting Covid-19 to literature and art, and universities have opened institutes dedicated to Xi's thought.The push to indoctrinate children with his political thinking brings Xi's ideology to its youngest audience yet.It comes as the Party conducts a wider campaign to fight what it considers corrupting influences on the youth, from video games to celebrities and foreign educational tools.Textbooks for older children delve into more complex topics such as the country's aerospace industry and the path to becoming a "modern socialist great power".Several parents privately expressed discomfort about the curriculum but declined to be interviewed by AFP, fearing they would get in trouble for speaking to foreign media.But the policy has been met with subtle pushback by anonymous internet commenters."Brainwashing starts from childhood," one user of the Weibo social media platform wrote."Can we refuse this?" asked another.Wang Fei-Ling, a professor of international affairs at Georgia Tech, said the textbooks were an example of the Communist Party's effort to "bet on a cult of personality in a Mao-like strong leader.""However, given what has happened in the Chinese society over the past four decades, I think many parents may not like it very much and many students may find it boring -- but few would or could protest it publicly," Wang added."Most are likely to simply not take it very seriously."While China has long given schoolchildren patriotism and political education, the new curriculum is "about promoting the cult of Xi as much as about instilling a greater sense of nationalism," China researcher Adam Ni told AFP.

In the last 18-24 months, the midcaps were outperforming now. In the last one, one and a month, interest in largecaps have helped the index move past 17,000, says Siddhartha Khemka, Head of Retail Research, MOFSL. What a rally we have seen as the Nifty surged from 16,000 to 17,000. What is on your radar as we try and move to 18,000?Yes, it has been a historical day for Indian markets. Nobody would have expected Nifty to touch 17,000 so fast when we touched 16,000 sometime back. Given that we are staring at the third wave of pandemic. Developed countries including US, Europe, UK are struggling with rising Covid cases. In India also, recent numbers have been rising but yes, the overall macro numbers have been quite supportive of the recovery in the macro economic growth. That is the case with global markets as well. With the US economy being on a strong footing, the US Fed said they would be looking at a calibrated taper. That kind of calmed the global nerves and liquidity flows continued afresh, entering largecaps again. In the last 18-24 months, the midcaps were outperforming now. In the last one, one and a month, interest in largecaps have helped the index move past 17,000. We had seen Nifty consolidating at below 16,000 for almost two and a half months but once it crossed there, we saw a lot of largecaps participating. In the last few days, banking stocks which contribute almost 40% of the index and were underperforming for a long time, have started participating again, So financials, especially banks have been a key pillar to the index touching 17,000 levels.

Banks and other financial institutions have started performing. Banks make 30% of the index and when they perform, we see this kind of euphoria, says Daljeet Singh Kohli, CIO, Stockaxis.com. What are you making of this roaring bull market? What can stall it and what is going to push it forward?There is nothing to worry about as of now. The market has been able to conquer a lot of the fears which we felt in the beginning of August. These sectors can take the market forward. a)The BFSI sector has not performed from January till July. This is probably the time for them to catch up and one of them has already done it. b)The FMCG sector has also done a very smart rebound. Banks have been the laggards, have started performing and are not waiting for Fed action to pan out and the final result of tapering. Fed chairman Powell has not yet given any specific timeline for tapering and the market has moved very fast. Banks and other financial institutions have started performing. Banks make 30% of the index and when they perform, we see this kind of euphoria. In September, the banks still have to catch up some more and therefore we will see a big move in banks like we have already seen in HDFC Bank. So, there is a big potential from the BFSI segment. Reliance is also picking up. Reliance again has news flow on plans to acquire solar energy company and other things. For the past several months, Reliance did not perform. It has also started performing now. As 10% of the index is one stock and that is performing, 30% banking is performing, obviously we are seeing high levels on frontlines. On the portfolio side, one may not be as gung-ho but the portfolio has not moved as much. But for September, we have started to reduce exposure on midcap IT and increase on Reliance. Why are markets not revisiting media stocks?Media still lacks that clarity on the subscription numbers and advertisement revenue. Also there are not many media stocks available. Zee is available but there are a lot of issues regarding the promoters and what they have done in the past. In the other stocks, people are still wanting to see what is the trajectory on the advertising part because when we speak to the managements of various companies, the place they want to cut down on expenses is advertisement. Now everybody talks about saving your money. Earlier, it used to be travel and employees. Now travel is already cut down, employees cannot be cut much. So the third place where they can reduce spending is spending on advertisements. That trajectory is still not clear. Also, it makes sense because we are still in that mode of a lot of lockdowns everywhere. Companies are also waiting for the economy to fully open before spending on advertisements. It will take some more time for these companies to perform and therefore there is not much of visibility on the numbers. Hence media is still not a preferred sector for most of the people. What explains the move in Bajaj Finance from Rs 5,000 to 7,500 in such a short time? NBFCs have suffered, new tech lenders like HDFC Bank and Kotak are going through time wise correction but Bajaj Finance has gone up like a rocket. What are we missing here?Sometimes it is not that we are missing something or somebody is smarter, it is just that somebody has made that leap of faith. I have been tracking Bajaj Finance since 2011. At that time, it was Rs 10. It went straight up to Rs 800. That was my first recommendation and it was a 52-week high at that time. Since then, we always had that feeling that we will come back and probably downgrade the stock because it is becoming costlier. It became six times book value and now it is nine times book value, an all-time high. Every time but when you come back, you actually feel that they are doing much better and they are doing things in the right direction. They are much ahead of time and they have done many things which are right in what was required for that business to do. We are talking these days of fintechs and so many companies have now come up. But all these things, Bajaj Finance have already been doing. They have been doing it in a much better way. I guess, that is what is driving this stock price continuously. Also, they have not been reckless. During times of pandemic, they were very conservative. Now they have improved and the latest trigger is from the three apps which are likely to come up in October. And then the AMC business is coming. So there are a few triggers which are playing. Also, it is more to do with valuation. If you want to give valuation of 100 times to any new fintech player, why can’t the same valuation come to this company because here is a traffic that is playing out. Also, there’s the fear of missing out (FOMO). But they did give a profit warning last quarter when retail NPAs went higher. How come markets are not recognising that? They did give a warning that AUM growth will slow down. So if the normal business is slowing down, why is the market not getting worried?The fact they acknowledged it gives them a better place in the eyes of the investors. They have acknowledged the problem areas and once you acknowledge then obviously you will take steps to improve on that. This is a management which has a lot of credibility.

Investors looking for core international equity allocation can consider the passive new fund offer (NFO) of Mirae Asset S&P 500 Top 50 ETF or its Fund of Fund (FoF). Given the sharp run-up in equities and the rich valuations, investors could stagger their investments through a systematic investment plan (SIP) over the next one year.The S&P 500 Top 50 consists of the 50 largest companies making up the S&P 500 index, giving investors exposure to bluechip companies in the US along with sectoral and currency diversification.At each annual reconstitution, the top 50 companies in the S&P 500, based on free-float market capitalisation, are selected for index inclusion. The NFO is currently open and closes on September 14 and the minimum investment size is ₹5,000. There is an exit load of 0.5% for redemptions within three months.The fund house is also launching an FoF investing in units of the ETF, which will help investors who do not wish to use the exchange route to investing. Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon and Facebook are amongst the top five holdings of the fund and the top three sectors are information technology (38.5%), communication services (18.4%) and consumer discretionary (13.5%). The ETF has an expense ratio of 37 basis points, while the FoF has an expense ratio of 62 basis points for the direct plan and 105 basis points for the regular plan.Financial planners believe investors must geographically diversify their equity mutual fund portfolios and doing it passively is one of the better ways. “It is well known that it is extremely difficult to generate alpha in the West. Hence, investors are better off taking exposure through this passive route to the top 50 companies,” said Nirav Karkera, head of research, Fisdom.A note by Mirae Asset MF shows that S&P 500 Top 50 Index has historically outperformed S&P 500 Index. Over a 10-year period, in rupee terms, the S&P 500 Index has returned an annualised 21.5% as against the S&P 500 Top 50 return of 22.6%. The S&P 500 Top 50 Index has outperformed S&P 500 Index in 7 out of 11 calendar years. “The companies in the portfolio are universal brands, giving investors an opportunity to participate in global trade,” said Vaibhav Porwal, co-founder, Dezerv.in, a wealth management company. Vaibhav recommends 15-20% of the equity portfolio should be allocated to international funds, of which about one-third can be allocated to this fund.

China, which along with Russia abstained from voting on the UN Security Council Afghanistan resolution on Monday, made it clear in its explanation to the 15-member body that it had “huge doubts about the necessity and urgency of adopting this resolution and the balance of its content”.Also, China told the Council that it was necessary for the international community to “engage with the Taliban, and actively provide them with guidance”. Russia went a step further to highlight the “negative impact of evacuation of highly skilled, qualified Afghan personnel” on Afghanistan’s “socio-economic situation”.ET has learnt that China also wanted the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a radical Uighyur outfit active in Xinjiang, named in the resolution alongside the ISIL, whose affiliate has claimed responsibility for the Kabul airport attack.The US, which along with the UK and France had circulated a draft UNSC resolution seeking to hold the Taliban accountable to its commitments against terror outfits, had last November delisted ETIM from the State Department terror designation list. An incensed China has been asking the US to put it back on its list, but Washington has aired doubts over the group’s potency and existence, while expressing larger concern on the allegations of human right violations by the Chinese government against the Uighurs.85814198“China has participated constructively in the consultations and put forward important and reasonable amendments together with Russia. Unfortunately, our amendments have not been fully adopted,” the Chinese side is believed to have told the Council, adding that there must not be “double standard” or “selective approach” on countering terror.The details of the amendments were articulated specifically in the Russian explanation of vote, once again baring the level of close coordination between Beijing and Moscow at the UNSC. The Russian side specified three issues it wanted in the resolution.First, it pointed out that the sponsors of the resolution refused to mention ISIL and ETIM in part on counterterrorism. “We interpret it as unwillingness to recognize the obvious and an inclination to divide terrorists into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’.”Second, Russia wanted the resolution to reflect the “unacceptability and negative impact” of evacuation of highly skilled and qualified Afghan personnel. But the basic text of the resolution was premised on getting Taliban to allow Afghans with valid travel documents to leave the country.Third, Russia had suggested that the resolution state the “adverse effects” of freezing of Afghan financial assets, which boils down to granting Taliban access to funds and resources.Both China and Russia alleged the western powers were trying to shift the blame. As the Chinese side said before the Council: “They cannot claim to care about Afghan people’s welfare, while imposing unilateral sanctions, or claim to support Afghanistan’s acceleration of economic and social development, while seizing and freezing Afghanistan’s overseas assets. They have left behind in the country huge catastrophe they have created but shifted the responsibility to Afghanistan’s neighboring countries and the Security Council.”China also brought up the issue of civilian casualties in the retaliatory attacks by the US following the Kabul airport bombing. It asked the US to stop “indiscriminately bombing the civilian populated areas in Afghanistan”. Despite these differences, China and Russia as permanent UNSC members did not veto the resolution, probably because the reference to UN entities in 1267 automatically included ETIM, though the specific purpose of getting the US to equate it with ISIL could not be achieved.

The torrential rain in the parts of Maharashtra has affected the normal life of the people on Wednesday and led flood-like situation in Jalgaon district where houses and roads are submerged.The torrential rains caused extensive waterlogging in Jalgaon and houses and roads were submerged in several areas of the district. Various areas were submerged in Jalgaon, bringing the city life to a still, while several vehicles were stuck under debris flow caused by heavy rainfall.Earlier, due to the torrential rains, one person has been killed, one seriously injured and it is being estimated that about 10-15 people have been washed away in the floods that have engulfed villages in Chalisgaon, Jalgaon district on Tuesday.The administration estimates that around 700-800 animals have died due to the floods.Due to the night rain on Tuesday, Kannad, Chalisgaon district. Jalgaon Ghat has collapsed and cracks have come in many places, said Bhagwat Patil, Traffic Incharge.The India Meteorological Department (IMD) had on August 28 said that "Maharashtra is very likely to experience an active rainfall spell during the next 4-5 days"."The formation of a low-pressure area over Northwest adjoining West-central Bay of Bengal off south Odisha-north Andhra Pradesh coasts, its likely west northwestwards movement and other associated synoptic features, Maharashtra is very likely to experience an active rainfall spell during next 4-5 days. Enhanced rainfall activity is expected over the region with heavy to very heavy rainfall at isolated places," the IMD had stated.

IDFC mutual fund earned the respect of debt investors by the way they handled the situation after the crisis in the debt market. Shivani Bazaz of ET Mutual Fund spoke to Suyash Chaudhary, head - fixed income at IDFC AMC, to find out how the fund house managed to win the trust of investors. Edited Interview.IDFC Mutual Fund gained huge respect among debt investors lately in the backdrop of the past troubles faced by the industry. What has been your experience?Our long-standing view has been that the risk profile of mass market investment products has to be consistent with the stage of evolution of the financial market ecosystem. On the one hand, this speaks to the liquidity in various classes of instruments in the secondary market. On the other, it has to do with the general level of appreciation amongst investors of various types of investment risks. Looked at this way one can argue that while the Indian ecosystem has come a long way especially over the past decade or so in terms of its development, there is nevertheless a time-frame that needs to be taken for the evolution. This can be expedited but not rushed. For example, the secondary market for lower- rated credits remains quite illiquid for the most part and offers inefficient price discovery. Even with all their liquidity planning and maturity laddering, open ended mutual funds may have to sometimes sell significant parts of what they hold over relatively short periods of time. Hence, liquidity in investments has to be of paramount importance. Also, from stand point of investors who may only over the past few years have started to diversify away from fixed deposits, mutual funds must be able to offer simple to understand and clearly defined products that take measured amount of risks. These considerations have driven our approach to fixed income over the years and form an integral part of our fund philosophy. Fortunately, they have served us well to navigate the significant volatility faced in markets over the past few years. Everyone talks about safety and liquidity, and you also talk about them. What is the difference in your approach?It’s always difficult to comment on what others do since one then speaks with imperfect information at hand. For that reason, let me restrict my observations only to what we do. We think about and communicate our fixed income funds in three buckets: liquidity, core, and satellite. From an investor’s standpoint this derives from how we think asset allocation within fixed income should be run. From our perspective, it helps clarify the construction of risk profiles for our various funds. Liquidity bucket is for your cash management needs, core bucket funds carry constrained amounts of duration and credit risks and are likely suitable for the majority of a conservative investor’s fixed income allocations, and satellite funds take higher credit and / or duration risks. Have you taken any special measures to ensure safety of investments?Within our overall philosophy as detailed above, we run a rigorous investment process to the best of our abilities. Under the process, and within our overarching framework, we continually evaluate our level of risk taking within the current and evolving macro- economic and credit environment. As an example, even though the macro-environment has stabilized substantially, credit spreads have fallen significantly generally speaking and this needs to be considered in investment decision making at the current juncture.Bond market is eagerly watching the RBI for cues on liquidity and rate cuts. What is your reading of the situation?The RBI has done a phenomenal job of containing financial market risks and economic growth deterioration as a consequence of the pandemic. It has done this through emphatic action and clearly defined communication and has been bold and clear headed to navigate through interpretational issues that have sprung up from time to time without causing analytical uncertainties for the market. At this point, foremost on the market’s mind is the framework for normalization of policy that the central bank may potentially take as it starts dialing back on the level of policy accommodation. First steps may already have been taken, though more towards process rather than policy normalization so far. Thus ad hoc bond market interventions have been reduced and the quantum of variable rate reverse repo (VRRR) auctions is being raised. Next steps could very well be further increase in VRRR followed by eventual normalization of the policy corridor through gradual hikes in the reverse repo rate. Repo rate hikes will have to wait until well into the next year.Do you expect any rate cuts this calendar year/ financial year? Where do you see the benchmark 10-year yield?Market is now looking for a gradual process of policy normalization rather than further easing. This is consistent with the underlying economic trends and global developments. As this process commences it is logical to expect the yield curve to lose some of the steepness that is present currently. At the same time, the long duration portion of the curve (say 10 year and beyond) will have to account for the larger than usual annual bond supply likely for the next few years at least. Given the interplay of these factors, for the foreseeable future we would still expect the curve to be steep relative to recent few years’ history, but not as steep as it is currently. Our preference for the most part is for intermediate maturity points (3 – 6) years where the carry on offer adjusted for duration risk taken seems to be the most optimal. You advise investors to choose schemes based on their investment horizon. Should investors play it safe and stick to short-term funds?To refer back to our liquidity-core-satellite bucket approach, most conservative fixed income investors should have predominant exposure to funds that run constrained amount of duration and credit risks. The relative weightage to core and satellite can be tweaked on the margin depending upon one’s view of things but extreme tactical shifts should be avoided, since this then voids the utility of an asset allocation framework. Having said that, yield curves are very steep in this cycle and while capital gains are extremely unlikely, the starting steepness of the curve should cushion somewhat against gradual rises in yields over the time ahead. This favors intermediate maturity points such as those run by short term funds. What is your advice to investors in long-term bond funds?Long-term bond funds (including active duration funds with a mandate to run longer durations) by definition belong to the satellite bucket since they are exposed to higher duration risk. So, investors should accordingly be mindful of how much exposure is being taken to such products. Measured allocation consistent with one’s underlying risk appetite will also allow for longer investment horizons since investor sensitivity to short term volatility will be accordingly lower. This is important as many times investor experiences in such funds tends to be suboptimal despite robust long run performance of the fund simply because investor participation gets reactively cut short in times of volatility.

Multinational companies as well as Indian firms across sectors, including retail, manufacturing, insurance and healthcare, will collaborate with rivals by 2025, a study by the TCS Thought Leadership Institute showed.The institute conducted a survey of 1,200 CEOs and senior executives across North America, UK, Europe, APAC and Latin America.Out of the surveyed firms, the study identified some as ‘Leaders,’ or firms that reported higher-than-average gains in revenue (over 65%) and net profit (over 73%) in their industries between 2015 and 2019.These companies constituted up to 29% of the survey.The study also identified firms that are ‘Followers’ which had higher-than-average decreases in revenue (-15%) and net profit (-36%) in their industry between 2015 and 2019.‘Leaders’ are more willing to collaborate with competitors, according to the ‘Where, How and What Leaders Will Compete with in the New Decade: Findings from the TCS 2021 Global Leadership Study.’“Clearly, most “Leaders” realize they must collaborate extensively with competitors to be key players in digital ecosystems. Lower performers still regard competitors as enemies to avoid. “Leaders” also anticipate that more of their revenue will come from purely digital offerings compared to “Followers,” it said.Krishnan Ramanujam, president and head of business and technology at TCS, said, “There are many other industries in which we see competitors collaborating, either for market access, or for better economies of scale, whatever may be the reason, we see this happening across the board.”While fewer than half of the Indian companies surveyed said they would collaborate with competitors, a third (34%) said they plan to increase collaboration by 2025 and 10% respondents said they will decrease it.Ramanujam said that there were two broad trends reflected in the survey – servitization and business-to-business (B2B) companies increasingly catering to their consumers directly.Servitization is a shift from a company selling just products to selling their product as-a-service. “One is B2B companies coming up with ‘As-a-Service’ offerings. A trend that also suits their end customers because nobody wants to spend on capex. They want to do things in a small way, deliver proof of value, and then go on to increase their investments and so on. The second thing that we also see is that many B2B companies now want to get into B2C or direct to consumers,” he said.Indian companies also believe learning/upskilling/reskilling will be the most important characteristic of corporate culture by 2025, the study said.The study also showed that despite growth in digital opportunities that business leaders expect through 2025, most are “underestimating the amount of innovation they will need to compete this decade.”

Chief economic advisor KV Subramanian has said the country’s macroeconomic fundamentals are strong and the tapering of monetary stimulus by the US Federal Reserve should not be a concern.“When macro fundamentals of a country are not very inspiring, that’s when the impact (of tapering) is felt much more. Fact that economic fundamentals – current account deficit, inflation, forex reserves and all other metrics – are very strong and I absolutely do not see it as that much of a concern,” Subramanian told media persons on Tuesday. He said fundamentals were strong because of the several reform measures undertaken by the government. “We have to understand that international investors look at macroeconomic fundamentals. Data in terms of macroeconomic fundamentals now vis-à-vis at the time of global financial crisis are strong,” Subramanian said, adding that the country is all set for robust growth on the back of structural reforms, government’s capex push and rapid vaccination. US Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell indicated at the recent Jackson Hole Policy Forum that it may start scaling back the Fed’s $120 billion-per-month bond buying programme, rolled out last year in response to the Covid-19 crisis, this year. “Whenever the tapering happens, India should be in a good position to face it,” said the CEA. The CEA said investment-led growth had been enabled through policy push through the several reform measures announced over the past year and a half and capex push.

The government has extended Vedanta's contract for the prolific Rajasthan oilfield by a further three months, and not by 10 years that the company has been seeking, pending settlement of a dispute over $520 million cost recovery. The original 25-year production sharing contract for the Barmer block in Rajasthan ended in May last year and the government has since extended the contract several times by a few months. The latest extension would last until November, according to people familiar with the matter. The block, which started producing in 2009 and contributes about a fifth of the country’s total oil output, is controlled by mining magnate Anil Agarwal. A key hurdle for a regular 10-year extension has been Cairn’s refusal to pay up $520 million in additional profit petroleum to the government. Cairn has to clear all dues before the government agrees to a regular extension. Cairn launched an arbitration proceeding last year to challenge the government demand for additional profit petroleum. It was followed by the government approaching the Delhi High Court in September to secure its money. A final resolution is awaited. The government demand was triggered after an audit flagged discrepancy in cost recovery claims by Vedanta in 2016-17 with respect to the Barmer block. Lower cost recovery by Vedanta can boost the government share in profit petroleum. Cairn has also run into a dispute with state-run ONGC, a 30% partner in Barmer, over investments made in the block.Meanwhile, Vedanta’s oil and gas production has fallen to 165,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (kboepd) in the first quarter of the current fiscal year from 187,000 boepd in the same period in 2017-18.

The UK has said that it is "ready" to launch strikes at the ISIS-K terror network in Afghanistan after the Pentagon revealed that there are at least 2,000 fighters of the outfit in the war-torn country.The Islamic State's Afghanistan affiliate, dubbed Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K, had claimed responsibility for the deadly twin blasts at the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in which 169 Afghans and 13 American soldiers were killed on Thursday.Britain's Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, told The Daily Telegraph newspaper on Monday that the UK could be involved in strikes against ISIS-K.He was speaking after the UK and the US troops completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.“The UK stands united with our coalition partners in mourning those killed by Daesh's (ISIS) horrific attack at Kabul airport and in our unwavering collective resolve to combat Daesh networks by all means available, wherever they operate."If there's an opportunity for us to contribute, I am in no doubt that we will be ready to. That will be anywhere where violent extremism raises its head and is a direct or indirect threat to the UK and our allies. Afghanistan is probably one of the most inaccessible parts of the world, and we're able to operate there," said Wigston.According to the newspaper, the UK government officials have reportedly examined logistics for air strikes, raising questions about where Royal Air Force (RAF) jets would be based, how they would refuel and how targets would be identified on the ground.“Ultimately what this boils down to is that we've got to be able to play a global role in the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh (ISIS), whether it's strike, or whether it's moving troops or equipment into a particular country, at scale and at speed," Wigston said.When UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was on Tuesday asked to reflect on the comments, he said while he would not go into “operational details", the UK retains the right to exercise "self-defence" and that must include “in relation to terrorist groups operating from abroad”.Raab is among the signatories of a joint statement issued by the US-led coalition that previously targeted ISIS in Syria and Iraq, vowing to "draw on all elements of national power – military, intelligence, diplomatic, economic, law enforcement" to crush the terror group.The minister said the UK needs to face the "new reality" in Afghanistan and work with other nations to exercise a "moderating influence" on the Taliban and hold it to its pledge of safe passage for those who want to leave.He said over 5,000 UK nationals were among more than 17,000 people evacuated by the UK from Afghanistan and that UK nationals still there were in the “low hundreds”.Raab also reiterated that the UK government does not recognise some claims that the UK asked for a gate at Kabul airport to be left open to assist its evacuations hours before last week's suicide bombing – despite US military leaders wanting to close it to minimise the risk."We did everything we could once we were alerted to the threat before the explosion took place to mitigate the risk," Raab told the BBC.In a draft resolution adopted on Monday evening under India's presidency, the United Nations Security Council urged the Taliban to let people leave the country, and not to allow it to become a base for terrorism.The resolution, drafted by the UK and France, was passed with 13 votes in favour and two abstentions -- China and Russia.The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on August 15, two weeks before the US' complete troop withdrawal on August 31 after a costly two-decade war. This forced Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country to the UAE.The Taliban insurgents stormed across Afghanistan and captured all major cities in a matter of days, as Afghan security forces trained and equipped by the US and its allies melted away.Thousands of Afghan nationals and foreigners have fled the country to escape the new Taliban regime and to seek asylum in different nations, including the US and many European nations, resulting in total chaos and deaths.

India’s top two telcos Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel have unleashed smart marketing moves to grab higher paying mobile broadband users from struggling Vodafone Idea (Vi) even as the latter continues to cede market share to its stronger rivals.Airtel is relaunching an earlier co-branding pact with PepsiCo India, under which prepaid users will get up to 2GB of complimentary 4G data on purchase of Lay’s, Kurkure, UncleChipps and Doritos snack packs. The Airtel-PepsiCo gameplan is to leverage the sharp surge in mobile broadband consumption and snacking volumes to boost revenues.Reliance Jio, in turn, launched a clutch of prepaid plans— starting at Rs 499— that offer complimentary subscription to entire Disney+ Hotstar content library. Besides a year’s subscription to Disney+ Hotstar, Jio’s new plans come bundled with unlimited voice, data, SMS, Jio Apps and other benefits. Jio’s offers come on the back of Disney+ Hotstar recently revising India offerings.

Indian banks are again allowing purchase of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through their channels, easing curbs that they had imposed on such services.The change in stance happened after the Reserve Bank of India told banks that they no longer can use the regulator’s 2018 circular prohibiting dealings in virtual currencies, as the direction has been struck down by the Supreme Court, said people in the know.Banks have also reopened accounts with crypto exchanges after conducting due-diligence, in absence of any specific regulation. This comes at a time when Indians are flocking back to cryptocurrencies.A quick check of a few cryptocurrency platforms shows that lenders such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank are allowing transactions in these virtual currencies through the UPI platform. These banks didn’t respond till press time Tuesday to emails seeking comment.Widely used crypto exchange WazirX has listed the net banking facilities of Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India, IDBI, IDFC First Bank, Federal Bank and Deutsche Bank to make payments for crypto purchases.According to crypto exchanges, more banks are now warming up to them and several channels are available for customers to buy crypto assets.“It is abundantly clear that now banks are more open to providing services to crypto exchanges. As India moves towards a more transparent regulatory framework for crypto assets, we will see more banks joining the party,” said Shivam Thakral, chief executive of BuyUcoin, a cryptocurrency exchange. BuyUcoin is dealing with Central Bank of India, Lakshmi Vilas Bank and Yes Bank, he said.“We offer multiple payment modes for Indian investors, such as UPI, Paytm UPI, IMPS, NEFT and RTGS. We also allow users to buy/sell cryptocurrency using their credit/debit cards but we see most of these transactions getting declined by the credit/debit card providers,” said Jay Hao, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange OKEx.com.A senior executive at a large bank said his bank had not opened its net banking or debit card channels to buy cryptos, but customers were using UPI channels which were outside the control of banks.“Banks have no control on UPI channels which could be used to make different sorts of payments, though we are yet to resume the full suite of payment services to buy cryptocurrencies,” said the executive.“We were not allowing any transaction up until recently, and that is still our official stance. But it’s difficult to monitor so many transactions and some do get through,” another banker said.Still, this is in contrast with the scenario a few months ago when users could only use the MobiKwik wallet or a crypto exchange's peer-to-peer platform to buy cryptos.Meanwhile, some crypto platforms have started introducing new ways to attract customers.

Everybody's going carbon neutral these days, from the big boys - Amazon, Microsoft, Unilever, Starbucks, JetBlue - to your favorite outdoor brand, even ski resorts. Probably your neighborhood coffee roaster, too.What's not to like? Becoming carbon neutral means cutting greenhouse gas emissions as much as you can, then offsetting what you can't avoid with measures like tree planting. Seems admirable.Well, not exactly. Carbon neutrality doesn't achieve any sort of systemic change. A coal-powered business could be entirely carbon neutral as long as it stops some landfill gas in Malaysia from entering the atmosphere equal to the emissions it's still releasing. American fossil fuel dependence would remain intact, and planet-warming emissions would continue to rise. The only way to fix that is through politics, policymakers and legislation. But distressingly, most businesses don't want to play in that arena.Instead, they're doing exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants: staying in their lane, accepting some blame for a global problem and maintaining the dominance of fossil fuels. They're well intentioned, sure, but also clueless, even complicit.Imagine if businesses put as much effort into climate lobbying as climate neutrality. Corporations wield tremendous influence over the political system. But on climate, most corporations have decided to sit this one out. Notably, the five biggest tech corporations - Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet and Amazon - spend only 4 percent of their lobbying dollars on climate, according to Influence Map.As a result, they avoid the chance to put in place systemic solutions in favor of carbon neutral navel gazing. Large corporations will protest, saying that they are lobbying on climate. But they are typically working both sides of the aisle. And their political contributions are mostly going in the wrong direction. Bloomberg Green examined political donations by more than 100 major American corporations and found last year that they were "throwing their support behind lawmakers who routinely stall climate legislation.,Climate never ascends to the level of mission-critical issues like trade policy and taxation. Sure, there are exceptions: Salesforce recently said it would intensify its focus on climate lobbying. And Patagonia has always been aggressive, along with Ben and Jerry's. But they are anomalies, led or inspired by charismatic founders.How did it come to this? The story of how what's considered the best approach to corporate sustainability became complicity with the very industry responsible for climate change starts with the famous "Crying Indian, commercial of the 1970s. The ad, in which an actor portraying a Native American is devastated by the sight of rampant pollution, created several generations of dutiful litter-picker-uppers. (Guilty!) But it wasn't so benign. It was, in fact, masterly propaganda from the beverage and container industries, designed to place responsibility for the trash problem on American consumers, not manufacturers.The approach was so good that the fossil fuel industry adopted the very same strategy.In 2004, BP hired the public relations firm Ogilvy & Mather to improve its image, in part by conveying the message that consumers of oil and natural gas bear the responsibility for their greenhouse gas emissions, not the producers of the oil and gas they use. The result was BP's ingenious carbon footprint calculator, which allows individuals to calculate the carbon emissions that result from their activities. It's "about helping you to go carbon neutral - reducing and offsetting your carbon footprint,, BP says on its "target neutral, website.Nor was BP alone among the big oil companies communicating this message. A study by Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran at Harvard published in May in the journal One Earth found that since 1972, ExxonMobil has consistently used "rhetoric aimed at shifting responsibility for climate change away from itself and onto consumers.,Yes, those consumers want the hot showers, warm homes and cold beer that coal, oil and gas provide. But they did not insist on the burning of fossil fuels for those amenities. Now there are other ways to produce energy, and responsibility to tap those renewable resources lies with the world's energy companies.Today, almost 20 years after BP's carbon calculator went live, cutting a firm's carbon footprint is still the gold standard of corporate climate action. The phrase is firmly lodged in the environmental lexicon.The idea of offsetting one's carbon footprint by reducing or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions in one place to make up for emissions elsewhere has grown into an enormous industry. Businesses often do this by buying carbon credits to offset emissions they can't or won't reduce. The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that "the market for carbon credits could be worth upward of $50 billion in 2030.,Many of these offsets underwrite worthwhile projects - protecting virgin expanses in some of the world's last great forests, as in the Amazon, or the deployment of solar power. But according to an analysis by the private-sector Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets, fewer than five percent of offsets in 2020 removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.Which, of course, is what we desperately need to be doing.A giant, systemic problem like climate needs to be addressed like other huge environmental challenges the world has successfully taken on - reducing ozone-depleting chemicals worldwide, for example, and sharply cutting back on smog and water pollution in the United States. Imagine if, in response to the expansion of the ozone hole, businesses and governments had said, "We'll just hope businesses do the right thing., Instead, international policymakers created the Montreal Protocol, which set standards that phased out ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbon use worldwide.We need more of that approach - citizens, businesses and governments working together to address this crisis. It might result in policy solutions like government regulation, effective carbon taxes, national standards for renewable energy and electrification, the elimination of legacy subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, strict auto emission standards and new national building codes. All of these approaches threaten fossil fuel's business model and, not coincidentally, would help to slow the warming of the planet.What do fossil fuel companies prefer? They like consumers and corporations to do anything and everything as long as they stay out of the companies' way and avoid doing anything that could actually make a difference.Tragically, the overwhelming majority of American businesses are on a path of complicity. Their climate strategy avoids conflict and generates great P.R. Unfortunately, it also allows fossil fuel interests to monetize their remaining assets unhindered, ensuring catastrophe for all.How carbon neutral is that?

The Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), an Enforcement Directorate document which is widely seen as similar to the police first information report, is “just a name” given to an internal document only “for the purpose of identification” of a case, the federal agency has told the Delhi High Court.The ED that probes money-laundering cases said “nothing emanates from an ECIR” and that it was “not a prerequisite” for starting investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.The agency said this in a recent response to a petition filed by Avantha group promoter Gautam Thapar, challenging his arrest by the agency in a money laundering case on August 3. Thapar has sought a copy of the ECIR lodged against him.The ECIR need not be shared with any accused, the ED argued, while saying also that it was “not a complaint” but just “a number given to an internal document” for identification.The ECIR is a document meant for “identification of a particular case and for departmental convenience” and is “purely an internal document”, it said in the response, which ET has seen.

The Taliban revelled in their victory after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, reiterating their pledge Tuesday to bring peace and security to the country after decades of war. Their anxious citizens, meanwhile, are waiting to see what the new order looks like. Having humbled the world's most powerful military, the Taliban now face the challenge of governing a nation of 38 million people that relies heavily on international aid, and imposing some form of Islamic rule on a population that is far more educated and cosmopolitan than it was when the group last governed Afghanistan in the late 1990s. Thousands who had worked with the US and its allies, as well as up to 200 Americans, remained in the country after the massive airlift ended with the last US soldiers flying out of Kabul international airport just before midnight Monday. Hours later, turbaned Taliban leaders flanked by fighters from the group's elite Badri unit toured the abandoned airport and posed for photos. "Afghanistan is finally free," Hekmatullah Wasiq, a top Taliban official, told The Associated Press on the tarmac. "Everything is peaceful. Everything is safe." He urged people to return to work and reiterated the Taliban's offer of amnesty to all Afghans who had fought against the group over the last 20 years. "People have to be patient," he said. "Slowly we will get everything back to normal. It will take time." A long-running economic crisis has worsened since the Taliban's rapid takeover of the country in mid-August, with people crowding banks to maximize their daily withdrawal limit of about USD 200. Civil servants haven't been paid in months and the local currency is losing value. Most of Afghanistan's foreign reserves are held abroad and currently frozen. "We keep coming to work but we are not getting paid," said Abdul Maqsood, a traffic police officer on duty near the airport. He said he hasn't received his salary in four months. A major drought threatens the food supply, and thousands who fled during the Taliban's lightning advance remain in squalid camps. "Afghanistan is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe," said Ramiz Alakbarov, the local UN humanitarian coordinator. He said USD 1.3 billion is needed for aid efforts, only 39% of which has been received. The challenges the Taliban face in reviving the economy could give Western nations leverage as they push the group to fulfill a pledge to allow free travel, form an inclusive government and guarantee women's rights. The Taliban say they want to have good relations with other countries, including the United States. There are few signs of the draconian restrictions the Taliban imposed last time they were in power. Schools have reopened to boys and girls, though Taliban officials have said they will study separately. Women are out on the streets wearing Islamic headscarves - as they always have - rather than the all-encompassing burqa the Taliban required in the past. "I am not afraid of the Taliban," said Masooda, a fifth-grader, as she headed to school on Tuesday. When the Taliban last ruled the country, from 1996 to 2001, they banned television, music and even photography, but there's no sign of that yet. TV stations are still operating normally and the Taliban fighters themselves can be seen taking selfies around Kabul. On Tuesday, the sound of dance music trickled out of an upscale wedding hall in Kabul, where a celebration was in full swing inside. Shadab Azimi, the 26-year-old manager, said at least seven wedding parties had been held since the Taliban takeover, with festivities moved to daytime because of security concerns. He said the Taliban have yet to announce any restrictions on music, but that wedding singers have cancelled out of caution, forcing him to use tapes. Azimi said a Taliban patrol stops by a couple times a day, but only to ask if he needs help with security. Unlike the now-disbanded police of the toppled, Western-backed government, the Taliban don't ask for bribes, he said. "Former officials, including police officers, were always asking us for money and forcing us to host their friends for lunches and dinners," he said. "This is one of the positive points of the Taliban." Abdul Waseeq, 25, runs a women's clothing shop in downtown Kabul selling Western-style jeans and jackets. The Taliban have left him alone, but his clientele seems to have vanished and he's concerned about the banking crisis. "Most of our customers who were buying these kinds of clothes are gone, evacuated from Kabul," he said. For now, the Taliban appear to be less interested in imposing restrictions on daily life than on getting the country running again, a task that could prove challenging to fighters who have spent most of their lives waging an insurgency in the countryside. They are expected to focus on the Kabul airport, where scenes of desperation and horror played out for weeks as tens of thousands fled in a massive US-led airlift. Early Tuesday, the airport was littered with artifacts of the withdrawal. Inside the terminal were scattered piles of clothes, luggage and documents. Several CH-46 helicopters used by American forces were parked in a hangar. The US military says it disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft before leaving. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said a "technical team" would survey the airport and try to restore normal operations, potentially requesting help from Qatar or Turkey, which have been involved in negotiations on running the airport going forward. The Taliban have said they will allow people with legal documents to travel freely, but it remains to be seen whether any commercial airlines will be willing to offer service. "I hope you will be very cautious in dealing with the nation," Mujahid said in a speech at the airport, addressing the Taliban fighters gathered there. "Our nation has suffered war and invasion, and the people do not have more tolerance." At the end of his remarks, the fighters shouted: "God is greatest!" Despite billions of dollars in Western aid over the past two decades, more than half of Afghans survive on less than a dollar a day. For the poorest, the change from one ruling system to another hardly matters in their daily struggle to survive. Sal Mohammad, 25, collects scrap metal and sells it to support his wife and 2-year-old daughter. On a good day, he makes about $5. "I don't feel that anything has changed in my life since the Taliban took over Kabul," he said. "I don't care about any of them, neither the Taliban, nor the government, nor the U.S. I would like peace in my country, nothing more."

The sun had just begun to rise over the Hindu Kush Mountains when the Taliban disappeared from Kabul, the battered capital of Afghanistan. The bodies of foreign Arabs who had stayed behind were mutilated and bloodied. They had been found and killed by advancing Afghans of another faction who were brought to the city by a blistering U.S.-led campaign that drove the Taliban from power. America was still reeling from the horrific terrorist attacks of two months earlier, when planes flown by al-Qaida terrorists crashed into three iconic buildings and a Pennsylvania field, killing nearly 3,000 people. The perpetrators and their leader, Osama bin Laden, were somewhere in Afghanistan, sheltered by the Taliban. The mission: Find him. Bring him to justice. Right then, Afghanistan - two decades of disorder behind it, two decades more just ahead - was suspended in an in-between moment. Nothing was certain, but much seemed possible. Against that backdrop, Afghans understood the mission against bin Laden to mean a chance to secure their future - a future as murky on that day as it is today. In those post-2001 months and years, they believed in the power of "the foreigners." From hundreds of years ago right up to the jumbled chaos of recent weeks as the United States pulled out of its air base and then the capital, the word "foreigner" has meant many things in the Afghan context, from invaders to would-be colonizers. But in November 2001, it meant hope. "I found the people relieved fresh and full on energy to start anew," says Torek Farhadi, who joined scores of educated and trained Afghan expatriates who returned to their homeland in 2002 after the Taliban were gone. He spoke from Geneva as he watched the Taliban's return to power last month. The arrival of the U.S.-led coalition weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks ended a repressive, religiously radical regime that had more in common with the sixth century than the 21st. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the reclusive one-eyed leader of the Taliban, had brought the village to the city. The strict edicts he taught at his one-room mud madrassa, or religious school, became law. Girls were denied education. Women were confined to their homes or, when in public, inside the all-encompassing burqa. Men were told to wear beards. Television was banned, as was all music but religious chants. When the Taliban fled and the new, post 9/11 leader, Hamid Karzai, entered the sprawling presidential palace, he discovered the Taliban had left their mark. Wall-to-wall hand-painted miniature murals had been defaced; Taliban who believed images of living things were a crime against Islam went to every tiny bird and blotted out its face with a black marker. The running of the country was handed to Washington's Afghan allies, many of whom had destroyed Kabul with their bitter feuding when they last ruled. Under their corruption, the country devolved into a collection of fiefdoms that enriched local warlords and led to the Taliban's rise. The Afghan military that would collapse in the wake of Taliban advances in 2021 began existence with its recruits often more loyal to a warlord than the army itself. Training was barely eight weeks for new, generally uneducated men. Building the Afghan army was often likened to repairing an aircraft midflight. So across Afghanistan, quickly and understandably, it started: The defeated Taliban began to re-emerge. And it kept getting worse. By 2012, just two years before the U.S. and NATO handed over the operational end of the war to Afghanistan's government, the Afghan army was barely competent and filled with fighters angry at what they considered poor treatment by their foreign trainers. The return last month of the Taliban has created widespread fear among young people in Afghanistan's cities - places where urban girls wearing headscarves have felt free to mingle in coffee shops and on the street. Young men wearing Western dress who dream of even greater freedoms have been part of the airport chaos that greeted the start of evacuation flights. A country of 36 million, Afghanistan is filled with conservative people, many of whom live in the countryside. But even they do not adhere to the strict interpretation of Islam that the Taliban imposed when last they ruled. The Taliban leaders, many of whom are linked to the previous regime, including the movement's co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, promise a different Taliban this time. Once camera shy and reclusive, many have made regular appearances on the diplomatic stage. And while the Taliban's original rule was marked by relentless repression that denied women a public space, they now say women can work, attend school and participate in public life. Yet even as the world watched in shock at the quick demise of the Afghan army and government over the past weeks, the signs of Afghanistan's post-9/11 decay had long been evident. Twenty years and billions of dollars in investment after 9/11, Afghanistan was considered one of the worst places in the world to be a woman in 2020 and in 2019, according to the Georgetown Institute for Women Peace and Security. In 2018, in a Gallup poll offered a scale of one to 10 to determine how respondents judged their chances for a better future five years down the road, Afghans averaged 2.3. Gallup called it a "new low for any country in any year." In the first years after 9/11, U.S. money arrived in Kabul in suitcases. There were no working banks at the time - and no oversight of the billions pouring into the country. Most of it passed through the hands of U.S.-allied warlords whose corruption had led to the Taliban's rise in the 1990s. American generals were often used by their Afghan allies to exact revenge. Mohabullah, an Afghan who had left the Taliban to return home to the central province of Ghazni, once laughed as he recounted how easily fooled the Americans were by their Afghan partners. He recalled how a gas station owner was turned in to U.S. forces as a Taliban - to settle a feud. American forces often unwittingly found themselves enmeshed in such local rivalries during those early months and years when they were utterly dependent on their warlord allies. In 2002, one U.S. general had to rely entirely on former warlords for information about prominent al-Qaida figures who were on the move. For those who have watched Afghanistan for years, the scenes of throngs of mostly young men hanging from departing aircraft at Kabul's airport in recent days seemed an indictment of the two decades of efforts and the billions of dollars spent. For many of those men, the desperation to depart was less about fear for their life - and more about finding a new one. And, say some Afghans, no wonder.

India’s antitrust regulator has reached out to independent sellers as part of its probe against ecommerce firms Amazon India and Flipkart, sources aware of the matter said.This is part of the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) ongoing investigation against the e-tailers over issues like deep discounting and preferential treatment of select sellers. In its conversation with some merchants last week, CCI sought details of how certain sellers were allegedly given preferential treatment, as mentioned in the original complaints by trade bodies such as Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and the Delhi Vyapar Mahasangh (DVM).The move follows a Supreme Court order that cleared the way for CCI to restart its probe against the e-tailers, which had tried to stall the probe in Karnataka High Court (HC) as well as the apex court by challenging the HC order.According to sources aware of the matter, some of the sellers told CCI that launches of certain smartphones were not accessible by independent third-party sellers and shared such contracts between ecommerce platforms and other sellers.Soon after the top court’s directive, the regulator sent questionnaires to both companies seeking their responses on various issues, sources said.“CCI’s director general (DG) essentially wanted to understand more from third-party sellers about the pain points sellers have been raising for a while now. This was part of the ongoing probe,” a person who was aware of the discussions said. “There was a discussion around how some of the top smartphones are launched and smaller sellers can’t participate in them because of marketplaces choosing large and preferred sellers for these launches.”The CCI’s secretary and the DG’s office did not respond to emails till press time Monday.The ecommerce sector is in the middle of a policy flux, with government think tank Niti Aayog opposing many wide-ranging changes proposed by the Department of Consumer Affairs for online commerce in India.Ecommerce firms and industry organisations have raised concerns over clauses that seek to include related parties and logistics service providers as ecommerce entities, the ban on flash sales and mandating the listing of local alternatives while selling imported goods or services.Another person involved in the conversations said it was not immediately clear how long the CCI would take to complete its probe on the ecommerce platforms.Hours after the Supreme Court paved the way for CCI to continue with its probe On August 9, Amazon said that it would end its joint venture with NR Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures next May, which houses Cloudtail, one of the largest sellers on the Amazon India marketplace.Amazon’s Cloudtail announcement made no mention of the apex court ruling.The complaints to CCI names Cloudtail as well as Appario Retail - another large seller on the marketplace where Amazon has a stake - saying the US-based etailer was preferring these sellers to others.Based on the complaints by CAIT and DVM, the CCI investigation was first ordered just days before Amazon founder Jeff Bezos landed in India on a business trip in 2020.Both Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon India moved the Karnataka High Court, which granted an interim stay into the probe in February 2020Later, CCI moved the Supreme Court, which sent the matter back to HC.A division bench of the HC eventually dismissed the appeals by Flipkart and Amazon India to stall the CCI probe in July.

It is a good time to take away some profit from the small and midcaps and focus on the largecaps and largish midcaps, says Nischal Maheshwari, CEO, Centrum -Institutional Equities. This is not going to be a market where one can simply bet on the index. It is going to be about finding individual stocks that have the potential of moving. It is going to be a market which will be very narrow and limited to those few stocks. Do you think that is going to be the case? What will the market look out for when picking those individual stocks?Basically, it is a relief rally. The market was holding on to what is going to happen at Jackson Hole and after that when the Fed Chairman Powell said that they are not looking at tapering immediately and did not even set up a date for that, the market was relieved and we once again saw the risk on the table My view is that there are definitely dark clouds on the horizon and one of them is basically that growth is something which people have to look out for because the pandemic and the vaccination is a heterogeneous event across the world. There are pockets which will be doing well and that will be the advanced economies. But the emerging markets across the world do not have enough vaccines and that is going to cause problems. Again, even in the advanced economies, we have seen that even after two vaccination doses, still the problems of pandemics are coming back in the US. In Europe also, as it opens up, we have to see how it happens. This pandemic is much longer and much more serious than what people are expecting and it is going to cause problems as far as growth is concerned. In that kind of a scenario, we should be very selective. What I am proposing in my strategy to investors is that one should be with the good quality largecaps and largish midcaps. One should get out of smallcaps and midcaps wherever there is an issue of quality and there has been a huge run up. Midcaps have outperformed largecaps and are at a higher valuations and it has happened in the 10-year average. So it is a good time to take away some profit from the small and midcaps and focus on the largecaps and largish midcaps. What do you make of Bharti Airtel at Rs 620 levels? How do you see the game playing in telecom from here?It seems in a year or two, India will be a duopoly in telecom. Voda is losing it out slowly and it is going to happen eventually. I was very hopeful that there would be an increase in tariffs but somehow that has not happened. But I very clearly see that once it becomes a duopoly, tariffs will start going up to much more manageable levels where both Reliance and Bharti make a decent ROE on their investments so that it is a long-term sustainable story. Beyond that I see Bharti getting into the digital platform more. There are talks of some investments by Google and so I definitely see a positive outlook for Bharti. Anyway they are building up a war chest also with the rights issue of close to a billion dollars. Bharti is headed higher because the fundamental terrain has changed, but the stock has also moved from Rs 500 to Rs 620 now and the market is already pricing that in?So yes, maybe in the short term, the market is pricing it in, but if it comes to a Google investment, they are building up a war chest and they are doing all this basically to acquire something. I definitely believe Bharti is moving towards a digital platform where they will be offering much more than telecom services because that is what is going to be at the end of the day. Most of these telecom services have to convert themselves into something more than just telephone and communication. One stock which I am sure has surprised even Sanjiv Bajaj is Bajaj Finance. Why are markets excited about it?I have always thought of Bajaj Finance as a digital company. It was never just a finance company. It is truly a fintech company which has got the scale and he has been able to execute it. If you look at it, ‘buy now pay later’ (BNPL) is not a new thing. It has been happening across the world for the last 8 or 10 years. Bajaj implemented it so successfully that nobody else has been able to actually copy that scale and make a profitable business out of that, especially in consumable goods. That is why people are betting on him. Everybody still continues to believe that he will be the leader and it is very difficult for others to catch up now.

China has used big data to trace and control the outbreak of COVID-19. This has involved a significant endeavour to build new technologies and expand its already extensive surveillance infrastructure across the country. In our recent study, we show how the State Council, the highest administrative government unit in China, plans to retain some of those new capabilities and incorporate them into the broader scheme of mass surveillance at a national level. This is likely to lead to tighter citizen monitoring in the long term. This phenomenon of adopting a system of surveillance for one purpose and using it past the originally intended aims is known as "function creep". In China, this involves the use of big data initially collected to monitor people's COVID status and movements around the country to keep the pandemic under control. The Chinese government has been quite successful at this, despite recent spikes in infections in eastern China. But this big data exercise has also served as an opportunity for authorities to patch gaps in the country's overall surveillance infrastructure and make it more cohesive, using the COVID crisis as cover to avoid citizen backlash. How China's COVID surveillance system worked Two key shifts have occurred to enable more comprehensive surveillance during the pandemic. First, a more robust system was constructed to collect and monitor big data related to pandemic control. Second, these data were then collated at the provincial levels and transferred to a national, unified platform where they were analysed. This analysis focused on calculated levels of risk for every individual related to possible exposure to COVID. This is how it worked. Every night, Chinese citizens received a QR code to their mobile phone called a "health code". The code required users to upload their personal information to a special app to verify their identity (such as their national ID number and a biometric selfie), along with their body temperature, any COVID symptoms, and their recent travel history. The system then assessed whether they had been in close contact with an infected person. If users received a green code to their phone, they were good to go. But an orange code mandated a seven-day home isolation, and a red code was 14-day isolation. The system was not perfect. Some people suspected their codes remained red because they were from the hotspot province of Hubei, or questioned why their codes unexpectedly turned red for just one day. Others reported the codes incorrectly identified their exposure risk. How Chinese people feel about this data collection Multiple studies suggest that although the system was intrusive, this state-controlled, big data monitoring was supported by the public because of how effective it was in containing the epidemic. A recent study found the public viewed this comprehensive data collection as positive and that it helped strengthen the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese public also viewed the initial criticism from Western countries as unfair and hypocritical, given many subsequently adopted varying forms of big data collection systems themselves. One scholar, Chuncheng Liu, canvassed Chinese social media and observed a notable social backlash against this type of criticism. After the state of South Australia released a new QR code system, for example, one comment read: China QR code - 'invasion of privacy, invasion of human rights'. Australian QR Code - 'Fantastic new tool'. On the flip side, there has been some public resistance in China over the potential for health codes to be re-engineered and used for other purposes. The city of Hangzhou was the first to implement the health codes in February 2020. However, in May 2020 when the municipal government proposed re-purposing the app for other uses after the pandemic (such as mapping people's lifestyle habits), it was met with strong citizen backlash. Concerns were further exacerbated when health code data was hacked in Beijing in December 2020. The hackers published the selfies that celebrities had used for biometric identity verification, as well as their COVID testing data. How these systems can be used for other purposes When big data systems become as expansive as they are now in China, they can shape, direct and even coerce behaviours en masse. The implications of this in a surveillance state are concerning. In the Guangxi autonomous region in March 2020, for example, one party member suggested using pandemic surveillance to "search for people that couldn't previously be found", effectively turning a health service into a security tool. Another example is how China's notorious "social credit system" was revamped during the pandemic. The system was originally set up before the pandemic to rate myriad "trustworthy" and "untrustworthy" behaviours among individuals and businesses. Good scores came with benefits such as cheaper transportation. During the pandemic, this system was expanded to reward people for "good pandemic behaviour" and punish "bad pandemic behaviour". Two academics in the Netherlands found punishments were imposed for selling medical supplies at an inflated price or counterfeit supplies, or for violating quarantine. Such behaviour could get a person blacklisted, which might deny them the ability to travel or even serve as a civil servant, among other restrictions. As we argue, it is crucial these surveillance systems embed principles of transparency and accountability within their design. If these systems aren't thoroughly tested or their potential future uses questioned, people can become habituated to top-down surveillance and function creep. To what extent these new surveillance systems will direct the behaviours of people in China remains to be seen. A lot depends on how the public reacts to them, especially as they are used for non-health purposes after the pandemic. (This article is syndicated by PTI from The Conversation)