The story of Bikaneri Narma variety of Bt cotton !!!

In the backdrop of nationwide farmer distress, particularly among cotton farmers, the government has been urged to allow farmers to use the reusable straight line BN Bt cotton seed and other similar varieties as against those non-reusable hybrid seeds being sold by corporates. This would help farmers save up to Rs 3,000 per acre.

• BT cotton seed industry is a Rs 4,000 crore business and profits are enormous.
• The use of BN Bt cotton will also be in line with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make-in-India programme.

The advantage of using BN Bt cotton is 

• That the farmer can reuse the cotton seed the following year, unlike the hybrid BT cotton where the farmer has to buy seed every year. 
• They can save up to Rs 2,000-3,000 per acre. 
• Straight line seeds cost Rs 100-150 per kg and he needs one and half kg for one acre as it is a high density plantation technology; whereas the hybrid BT cotton costs Rs 2,000 per kg and he requires one to two and half kg per acre. 
• Also due to uncertainty of rains if the farmer has to resow the seeds he would save on cost.

US me kya hota hai ?

• In the US,  they use straight line seeds and not hybrid BTcotton as it requires a lot of manual labour.

Toh India me kyun nahi allow kar rahe hai BN BT Cotton ?

• Genetically Engineering Application Committee in its meeting on May 2, 2008, had approved commercial release of BN BT cotton in North, Central and South zones. 
• However, due to certain patent issues, the matter was referred to the Sudhir Sopory Committee constituted by ICAR. 
• The Committee on verification has found that BN actually contains BT gene Cry 1Ac (MON 531event) originally patented by a different company. (yeh toh FRAUD ho gaya ! )

Fraud kya tha...sanshipta me jaan le  ?

Ab ?

• However,  the patent was that of Monsanto and it has since expired.

Toh ?

• Top officials in the environment ministry are delaying because there are only two months left for field trials of the BN Bt. There needs to be an enquiry into this.

#AccheDin for IRAN in Middle-East ? -->> A complete PERSPECTIVE on whats going on in the region !!!

The most recent thing that happened in Middle east !

• The war in Yemen and the breakthrough nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States have sent the already frenzied Middle East analysis machine into meltdown mode. 
• These developments come fast on the heels of almost too many changes to keep track of: the Iraqi government’s capture of the city of Tikrit, rebel gains in northern and southern Syria, and mass-casualty terrorist attacks in Tunis and Sanaa.

Regional Dominance -- Shia <=> Sunni squabble ?

This drumbeat of headlines, however, should not distract us from the larger meaning of events in the Middle East. 

We are witnessing a struggle for regional dominance between two loose and shifting coalitions — 

• one roughly grouped around Saudi Arabia and 
• one around Iran. 

Despite the sectarian hue of the coalitions, Sunni-Shiite enmity is not the best explanation for today’s regional war. 

                                                   

This is a naked struggle for power: 

Neither of these coalitions has fixed membership or a monolithic ideology, and neither has any commitment whatsoever to the bedrock issues that would promote good governance in the region.

Then, what is it ?

• This is, in some ways, an updated version of the vast and bloody struggle for hegemony that shook the Arab world in the 1950s and 1960s. 
• In that era, a coalition of reactionary monarchs, led by Saudi Arabia, did battle with a coalition of Arab nationalist military dictators, led by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. 
• Just like in that past era, every single major player today is opposed to genuine reform and popular sovereignty.
• Today’s ascendant regimes are all reactionary survivors — and sworn enemies — of the Arab Spring.

Iran ka scene kya hai ? 

• The Iranians mercilessly crushed the Green Revolution in 2009, and have invested heavily in authoritarian partners in Iraq and Syria, paramilitary group such as Hezbollah, and non-democratic movements in Bahrain and Yemen. 
• Iran’s leaders are theocrats, but they are savvy and pragmatic geopolitical worker bees: They have backed Sunni Islamists and Christians, while even some of their close Shiite partners — like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, and the Zaidi Houthis in Yemen — belong to heterodox sects and don’t share their views on religious rule.

Aur yeah Arabzaade ?

• On the other side of the struggle are the Arab monarchs from the Gulf, run by the same families that brought us the Yemeni war of the 1960s. 
• They have extended their writ through generous payoffs and occasional violence, like the Saudi-led invasion of Bahrain in 2011, which saved the minority Sunni royal family from being overrun by the island kingdom’s disenfranchised Shiite majority.

This Saudi-led alliance is Sunni-flavored, but it would be incorrect to see it as monolithically sectarian.

• Not long ago, in fact, Saudi Arabia underwrote the same Zaydis it is now bombing in Yemen. 
• The current coalition relies for populist credibility on Egypt, whose governing class is dominated by secular, anti-Islamist military officers. 
• It enjoys dalliances in various conflict theaters like Syria and the Palestinian territories with Muslim Brothers and jihadis. 
• It has drawn extensively on help from the United States — and on occasion from its supposedly sworn enemy, Israel.

************************************************************************

Perhaps the best glimpse of the Saudi-led alliance’s goals came when Kuwaiti emir Sabah al-Sabah addressed the Arab League at the end of March, in the meeting that inaugurated the war in Yemen.

“A four-year phase of chaos and instability, which some called the Arab Spring, shook our region’s security and eroded our stability,” the emir thundered. The uprisings, he said, encouraged “delusional thinking” about reshaping the region — perhaps a reference to Iran’s ambitions of regional influence, perhaps a reference to the ambitions of Arab reformers to limit the influence of the repressive states propped up by the Gulf monarchies. To the emir, the only outcome of uprisings was “a sharp setback in growth and noticeable delay in our progress and development.”

************************************************************************

So what's the crux of the story ?

• This is the crux of the regional fight underway: the old order, or a new one that would transform the balance of power — while changing little else about the way the Middle East is governed. 
• The Saudi bloc wants to turn back the clock to the status quo ante that existed before the uprisings. 
• The Iranian bloc wants to permanently alter the region’s balance of power. 
• Both factions are run by opaque, secretive, repressive, and violent leaders. 
• Neither side is interested in popular accountability, better governance, or the rights of citizens.

So Saudi k team me kon hai ?

• For all the doubts about Saudi Arabia’s capacity to craft and execute complex policy, the kingdom has cobbled together a formidable coalition. 
• It quickly signed up most of its clients and partners for the air campaign, including Morocco, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Sudan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. 
• The United States supported the war, despite its reservations. 
• Of the kingdom’s close allies, only Pakistan has so far resisted pressure to join the fight.

Saudi ne Egypt me kya game khela ?

• In just the last year, we’ve seen at least two major volte-face. 
• Riyadh helped engineer a regime change in Egypt, ushering President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power. 
• After experimenting with quasi-democracy and a Muslim Brotherhood presidency that defied the powerful Gulf monarchies, Cairo is now governed by a military dictator who walks firmly in lockstep with Riyadh — even promising to dispatch ground troops to a war in Yemen of which he would have probably preferred to steer clear. 

Qatar bhi Saudi k team me !!

• Qatar, the unbelievably rich emirate that has long cultivated an independent foreign policy, also found itself strong-armed by Saudi Arabia and finally caved. Its emir abdicated in favor of his son, a 34-year-old political novice, and today Doha is reading from Saudi Arabia’s song sheet.

So is their that SUNNI element ..or is it just about POWER ?

• Both examples show that this is not a monolithic bloc bound by uniform ideas of authoritarian rule or Sunni supremacy. 
• Instead, it is a messy realpolitik coalition hammered together by shared interests — and at times by bribes and blackmail. 
• Its members don’t agree on everything: 

Yeh Rishta kya kehlata hai ?

• Saudi Arabia hates Russia, in part because Moscow backs Iran and Syria. 
• Egypt loves Saudi Arabia because Riyadh keeps its economy afloat — but it also loves Russia, because it can play off military aid from Vladimir Putin against that from the United States. 
• In public, Sisi praises the Gulf leaders — but in leaked private recordings, he dismisses them as oil bumpkins who can be bilked of their money by more dynamic Arab nations. 
• Qatar no longer openly defies Saudi Arabia, but it still supports Muslim Brothers and jihadis in Syria to the extent it can, and in opposition to Saudi preferences.

Aam Sunni kya sochta hai ?

• Since Saudi Arabia’s gloves came off in Yemen, Sunnis across the region have expressed a kind of fatalistic relief: At last someone is doing something to confront Iranian influence. 

IRAN ki kya CHAL hai ?

• But Tehran has extended its influence carefully, hedging its bets by supporting multiple groups in every conflict zone and always maintaining a degree of remove — if their investments fail, it will have not lost a war in which it was a declared combatant. 
• This blueprint has served Iran well during 30-plus years of intervention in Lebanon and Iraq, and four years of orchestrating major combat in Syria. 
• Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has entered the Yemen war directly, and therefore has no cover. It will own the civilian casualties, and inevitably — when the war has no clear and easy outcome — it will own a failure.

Itihaas kya sanket de raha hai ?

History is not on Riyadh’s side in this campaign. 

• Regional wars tend not to go well for invaders; just think of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait or the last Yemen war in the 1960s. 
• The U.S. invasion of Iraq should also offer a cautionary lesson: Many people at the time, including some Iraqis, felt that some major action was better than the status quo, that toppling Saddam Hussein would at the least get a hairy situation unstuck. They were soon disabused of that notion, as Iraq spiraled into chaos.

Vishwa ko kya umeed hai US se ?

• America should take particular care in this conflict. 
• It has built deep alliances with Saudi Arabia, and it has been far too hesitant to reinvent its dysfunctional relationship with Egypt in the post-Mubarak era. 
• It should act as a brake on Saudi Arabia’s outsized expectations in Yemen, and it should exact a price for any support it gives the war there. 
• Any campaign in Yemen should strengthen, rather than undermine, counterterrorism efforts there, and the United States should share its military know-how in exchange for Saudi cooperation on the Iran deal.

US ka double game dekho -->> Divide and Rule !!

• Sure, it’s bizarre to see the U.S. military working with Iran to battle the Islamic State in Iraq, while working against Tehran in Yemen. 
• It’s also refreshing. This isn’t a homily; it’s foreign policy. 
• It’s encouraging to see the United States operating around the edges of a complex, multiparty conflict and finding ways to advance American interests. 
• Its next challenge will be finding new ways to simultaneously pressure rivals like Iran and recalcitrant allies like Saudi Arabia.

IRAN ke acche din aayenge Middle East me ?

But to a large extent, the United States is a sideshow: 

• The main event is the regional struggle for influence between the Iran and Saudi blocs.
• One need only look at the two major events this spring — the Iran nuclear deal and the capture of Tikrit with the help of Tehran’s military advisors — to get a sense of who’s winning. 
• America’s preferred side has bumbled impulsively from crisis to crisis, buying or strong-arming support and launching military adventures that are likely to produce inconclusive results. 
• Iran’s side, meanwhile, has crafted tight state-to-state relations with Syria and its onetime enemy Iraq, and has deepened its influence in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Bahrain, and Yemen. 
• Despite the theocratic dogma of Iran’s Shiite ayatollahs, the regime in Tehran has managed to position itself as the regional champion of pluralism and minorities, against a Saudi grouping whose philosophy has drifted dangerously close to the nihilism of al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Kahaani ka tatparya ?

• Unless Saudi Arabia and its allies can learn a new, more durable style of power projection, their costly feints will only buy short-term gains. 
• The kingdom might manage to bomb the Houthis back to their corner of Yemen, and its Syrian clients may seize some more towns and cities from Assad, but the long-term trend points in Iran’s favor.

 **********************************************************************

Give it a THOUGHT !!!!

Taking Financial Inclusion to the next level after the PMJDY success !

Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY), one of the world’s most ambitious initiatives to promote financial inclusion. The programme is off to a good start—within six months, nearly 125 million new bank accounts have been opened.

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana programme, the drive launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure at least one member in every household in the country had a bank account, could soon emerge as a worldwide template for achieving rapid financial inclusion.

The Financial Action Task Force, a global anti-terror financing agency, has given initial approval to a paper by India on how it achieved the task in a few months while adhering to know your customer (KYC) norms. The study will now be fleshed out further. The agency, which advocates stringent KYC standards in order to stamp out terror financing, is keen to see whether the Indian model can be emulated by other countries. The US, Russia, Spain and the Netherlands have extended support to the paper. 

Since Independence, India has pursued a range of initiatives to wean the poor away from traditional forms of moneylending and bring them into the financial mainstream. Now, financial inclusion has become a prominent policy priority.

The programme builds on the country’s recent successes. While earlier efforts to expand financial inclusion may have fallen short of policymakers’ hopes, the more recent growth of group lending models and microfinance institutions has made it easier for the rural poor to save and take loans. Moreover, business correspondent models have helped expand the reach of financial access points, microfinance institutions have been brought under a self-regulatory mechanism, the national payments system has been developed and strengthened, and the Unique Identification Number (Aadhaar) initiative has been rapidly scaled-up, signing on new customers and authenticating them to make transactions more efficient. The recent establishment of small banks and payment banks is also a clear step forward.

Nonetheless, significant potential exists to further leverage technology to boost financial inclusion. 

Already, direct cash transfers into beneficiaries’ Aadhaar-linked bank accounts are starting to plug leaks and promoting the cost-effectiveness of social benefit schemes. 

THE WAY FORWARD !!!

• Expanding the use of Aadhaar to banks, insurers, post offices, non-banking financial companies, microfinance institutions, cooperatives and mutual funds can boost these efforts considerably.

• The rich dataset of transactions that such expansion will yield can help develop new financial products for households and small businesses. For example, data on individual patterns of saving or timely repayment records in a credit bureau can substitute the requirement for collateral assets or guarantees, making it easier for institutions to offer loans, insurance or micro-investment products to underserved segments of society. Traditional channels such as cooperative banks, post offices and rural financial institutions too can play a greater role.

• India can also take advantage of the developments in mobile telephony. With more than 870 million active mobile subscribers, India can expand financial inclusion by promoting mobile financial services. For instance, mobile money can help eliminate ad hoc means of transferring money that are expensive, unreliable and prone to theft. It can complement the 425 million debit and credit cards currently in use in India and target the 150 million RuPay cards linked to PMJDY accounts, of which 110 million have already been issued. For these models to work, however, they must ensure commercial viability for the banks, banking correspondents and others providing needed services.

• Ensuring women’s access to resources is equally critical. Although microfinance has successfully linked many women to mainstream financial services, most women-owned micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) continue to remain underserved by formal institutions—only about 3% of the country’s 3 million such enterprises have formal financial access.

• A robust system is also needed to ensure consumer protection and build depositors’ trust in and understanding of the system. While efforts are on to continue to expand financial services, the suitability of the products on offer and the financial capability of clients are also being emphasized, helping create confidence among new customers that their money is safe.

• Globally, the goal is to achieve financial access for all by 2020. World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands—the UN secretary-general’s special advocate for inclusive finance for development—have urged countries to make a concerted effort in this regard.

• The success of PMJDY can indeed be a model for other countries. India is already providing leadership and spurring innovations. Recently at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington DC, Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan and State Bank of India chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya shared their insights on India’s successes, the priorities that lie ahead and the challenges that remain.

• On its part, India too can benefit from the wealth of experience garnered by other countries in promoting financial inclusion. Being home to one-third of the world’s poor living on less than $1.25 a day, India’s success will be key if we are to achieve universal financial access by 2020.