Felipe VI sworn in as Spain’s king

Spain’s new King Felipe VI was proclaimed monarch at a formal ceremony in the country’s Parliament on Thursday, a deliberately low-key occasion for austere times and tarnished royal reputations.

King Felipe swore an oath of allegiance to democratic principles in front lawmakers and senators, who shouted “Viva el Rey!” (Long live the king!).

Two big Swiss banks have two-thirds of all money of Indians

It is just two big banks - UBS and Credit Suisse - which appear to be accounting for almost two-third of the total money held by Indians in Swiss banking system, known for their famed secrecy walls.

According to the latest official data disclosed by Switzerland’s central banking authority SNB (Swiss National Bank), Indians’ money in Swiss banks rose by 43 per cent last year to 2.03 billion Swiss francs (nearly Rs 14,000 crore), despite growing global pressure on Switzerland to share client details of their banks.

A further analysis of SNB data shows that the ‘big banks’ account for 68.2 per cent or about 1.4 billion Swiss francs (close to Rs 10,000 crore) of the total money belonging to the Indian clients of Swiss banks.

There are a total of 283 banks in Switzerland, out of which only two - UBS and Credit Suisse - have been classified as ‘big banks’ by Zurich-based SNB. There are also 93 foreign-controlled banks operating in the country.

However, the amount held by Indian clients in ‘savings and deposit accounts’ of Swiss banks is comparatively less at about 63 million Swiss francs (less than Rs 500 crore) and account for just about three per cent of the total exposure of Indians to the Swiss banking system.

Swiss banks classify a major portion of their clients’ money as “other amounts due to customers” and such funds due to their Indian clients stand at nearly 1.6 billion Swiss francs (over Rs 11,000 crore).

The ‘other’ avenues through which clients park their funds with Swiss banks include “trading portfolios, financial investments and participating interests”. Besides, banks are also said to be promoting ‘precious metals’ among their clients for parking their funds.

A small portion of clients’ money is also held by Swiss banks through other banks in the foreign countries. For Indian clients, such funds stood at about 94 million Swiss francs (about Rs 650 crore) at the end of 2013.

The total Indian money held in Swiss banks includes 1.95 billion Swiss francs held directly by Indian individuals and entities, and another 77.3 million Swiss francs through ’fiduciaries’ or wealth managers at the end of 2013.

The latest data from Zurich-based SNB comes at a time when Switzerland is facing growing pressure from India and many other countries to share foreign client details, while its own lawmakers are resisting such measures.

India has also constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe cases of alleged black money of Indians, including funds stashed abroad in places like Switzerland.

The funds, described by SNB as ‘liabilities’ of Swiss banks or ‘amounts due to’ their clients, are the official figures disclosed by the Swiss authorities and do not indicate towards the quantum of the much-debated alleged black money held by Indians in the safe havens of Switzerland.

El Nino’s complex link to the monsoon

In 1997, even before the monsoon began, waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean had warmed sharply, leading to one of the most powerful El Nino events in the last century. As such a phenomenon typically suppresses monsoon rains over India, a severe drought was widely predicted. As it turned out, the monsoon that year ended with above average rains. Just five years later, in 2002, a moderate El Nino unexpectedly wrecked the monsoon and produced a massive drought.

With another El Nino developing in the Pacific, there is considerable worry over its impact on this year’s monsoon. With the onset of rains over Kerala delayed by a few days and the monsoon’s subsequent northward progression stymied, those concerns are bound to escalate.

Although not every El Nino retards the monsoon, the Pacific becoming exceptionally warm greatly heightens the risk of a monsoon turning deficient. When the Pacific is neither unusually warm nor cool, there is only a 16 per cent chance of a monsoon ending in a drought. Rainfall data for 126 years indicates that the odds of a drought jump to over 40 per cent when there is an El Nino.

Almost a century has passed since Sir Gilbert Walker, then Director-General of Observatories in India, found indications that what happens far away in the Pacific affects the monsoon. Scientific understanding of what is known as the ‘El Nino Southern Oscillation’ (ENSO) has grown in leaps and bounds over recent decades.

Nevertheless, predicting how an El Nino will shape up and, more importantly for India, forecasting what might thereby happen to the monsoon are still challenges.

There could be several factors influencing the interplay between an El Nino and the monsoon. For one thing, which part of the Pacific warms has an impact on the monsoon.

El Ninos come in two ‘flavours,’ noted K. Krishna Kumar, who was then with the Indian Institute of the Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune, along with a group of other scientists in a paper published in Science in 2006.

In 1997, the eastern Pacific had become exceptionally warm, thereby limiting the atmospheric circulation changes that adversely affected the monsoon. It was when the sea surface temperature anomalies were highest in the central Pacific that an El Nino had drought-producing effects over India.

Central Pacific El Ninos had appeared in 2002 as well as in 2004 and 2009, with all three years ending in drought, said Dr. Krishna Kumar, currently a consultant with the Qatar Meteorology Department.

Not clear
As this point in time, it was difficult to say which sort of El Nino would manifest this year, he told this correspondent. “The current generation of climate models do not have the capacity to distinguish whether a central or eastern Pacific El Nino will evolve.”

Besides, what happens in the Indian Ocean also shapes the course of the monsoon.

Toshio Yamagata’s research group at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) has studied the ‘Indian Ocean Dipole’ (IOD) and its effect on rains over India. During a ‘positive IOD’, the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean off Sumatra in Indonesia becomes colder than normal while the western tropical part of the ocean near the African coast becomes unusually warm. Such an event has been found to be beneficial for the monsoon. On the other hand, a ‘negative IOD,’ when temperatures at either end of the Indian Ocean swing in the opposite direction, hampers the monsoon.

An IOD can counter or worsen an El Nino’s impact on the monsoon, according to a paper by K. Ashok, currently at IITM in Pune, along with Dr. Yamagata that was published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2001.

A positive IOD had facilitated normal or excess rainfall over India in 1983, 1994 and 1997 despite an El Nino in those years. But during years such as 1992, a negative IOD and El Nino had cooperatively produced deficit rainfall.

The latest prediction from the JAMSTEC group suggests a ‘very high’ probability of a negative IOD turning up this year. Sulochana Gadgil, a much respected atmospheric scientist who was with the Indian Instititute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, has along with colleagues been examining wind patterns over the equatorial Indian Ocean that are associated with changes in cloud formation.

During the positive phase of the ‘Equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation (EQUINOO),’ there is enhanced cloud formation and rainfall in western part of the equatorial ocean near the African coast while such activity is suppressed near Sumatra.

This phase is associated with good rains over India. Its negative phase, when cloud formation and rainfall flares up near Indonesia, retards rains over India.

While EQUINOO and IOD go in step during strong positive IOD events, such as in 1994 and 1997, they do not always do so, according to Prof. Gadgil. The severe drought of 2002, for instance, occurred when a moderate El Nino as well as strong negative EQUINOO together took a toll on the monsoon; that year, the IOD was slightly positive.

The fate of the monsoon depends to a large extent on the Pacific Ocean system and EQUINOO, she argues. While climate models can generate reasonable predictions of events in the Pacific and its impact on the monsoon, they are not able to do the same for EQUINOO.

“The monsoon has a mind of its own,” cautioned Raghu Murtugudde, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Maryland in the U.S. It was not a one-way street with an El Nino affecting the monsoon. What happened to the monsoon in the key months of July and August might determine how the El Nino evolved.

“We need to be able to forecast the monsoon without relying totally on the predictability of El Nino.

The government appointed Tax Administration Reform Commission (TARC), headed by Parthasarathi Shome, has recommended some radical reforms in tax administration which include:

Abolition of the post of Revenue Secretary
Amalgamation of CBDT and CBEC
Broaden the use of Permanent Account Number (PAN)
Avoid retrospective amendments to tax laws
Income Tax Return should also include wealth tax details
Separate budget allocation to ensure time bound tax refund and a passbook scheme for TDS (Tax Deduction at Source).
Tax Administration should be given greater functional and financial autonomy and independence from governmental structures, given their special needs.
As per report submitted by the panel to the Finance Ministry, the Revenue Secretary, an IAS, is “likely to have little experience or background in tax administration at the national level and little familiarity with tax.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is very close to becoming world’s second biggest tech employer. Currently, with over 3 lakh employees, it has already become the world’s 3rd largest employer in the technology sector. Considering the pace at which it is expanding, it could become the second largest employer by the end of 2014, overtaking Hewlett-Packard, and would be fast closing in on leader IBM.

TCS has been India’s one of the biggest job creators in recent years. On an average, the number of employees in TCS is rising each year by between 25,000 and 35,000. In fiscal 2013-14, the $13.4-billion Tata Group company hired 61,200 people, with the net addition being 24,268, brushing aside those who left the company. As per the company, it will hire 55,000 people in 2014. If the net addition is half of that, it will be significantly ahead of HP’s number by the end of fiscal 2014-15. Among Indian IT companies, Infosys is almost 50% of TCS with 1.6 lakh employees.

India 143rd on Global Peace Index

India 143rd on Global Peace Index
Ranking India among 20 most violent places in the world, a global study today said the country's economy took a hit of over Rs 1 lakh crore in containing and dealing with cases of violence last year.

In the latest annual ranking of Global Peace Index, India has been ranked at 143rd position out of 162 countries surveyed.

While India has slipped two positions, Iceland continues to top the list as the world's most peaceful place. However, Syria has replaced Afghanistan as the most violent place.

"The economic impact of containing and dealing with the consequences of India's levels of violence was estimated to cost the national economy USD 177 billion (about Rs 1.07 lakh crore) in 2013," the Sydney-based international think tank Institute for Economics and Peace said in its report adding that is equivalent to 3.6 per cent of India's GDP, or USD 145 per person.

It estimated the impact of violence on global economy at USD 9.8 trillion or 11.3 per cent of world GDP in 2013, an increase of USD 179 billion from the previous year. The increase has been largely attributed to upward revisions of China's military expenditure and the number and intensity of internal conflicts.

Within South Asia, Bhutan has been ranked as the most peaceful country, followed by Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. India is ranked fifth in the region -- better than Pakistan at sixth and Afghanistan at seventh.

Globally, Pakistan is ranked 154th, while Afghanistan is at 161st position in this year's list.

As per the report, India suffers chronically from international tensions and widespread internal conflict.

"While Maoist movements are one of the biggest threats to India's internal security, sporadic conflict with its neighbours also threatens the country's external security," it said.

In concurrence, India is ranked number 4 out of 159 countries in the Global Terrorism Index.

"If India could improve its overall levels of peace, the dividend that would flow from this would substantially improve the country's economic growth rates. This can be achieved by a renewed government focus on building the underlying qualities that create and sustain peaceful societies such as low levels of corruption, well-functioning government and equitable distribution of resources," IEP founder and Executive Chairman Steve Killelea said.

The GPI is the world's leading measure of global peacefulness produced by the IEP. It gauges on-going domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society, and militarisation in 162 countries by taking into account 22 indicators.

India gears up for combat exercises with US, naval war games to include Japan

NEW DELHI: India is gearing up for the next round of military exercises with the US, with the top-notch "Malabar" naval war games in the Pacific and the intensive "Yudh Abhyas" counter-terror drills in Uttarakhand, in the first such maneuvres after the Modi government came to power last month.

Just before Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves for Japan to meet his counterpart Shinzo Abe on July 3 and 4, India will dispatch four to five warships, including a Rajput-class destroyer and a Shivalik-class stealth frigate, on the long-range overseas deployment.

"The warships will first head for the 'Indra' exercise with Russia off Vladivostok and then reach the North Pacific towards end-July for the Malabar exercises, which apart from India and US will include Japan," said an official.

India had invited Japan to participate in this year's Malabar war games, which have ruffled the feathers of a prickly China in the past, during Abe's visit to New Delhi in January.

Modi himself is very keen to further strengthen the strategic partnership with Japan, the second country he will visit after Bhutan. The chemistry is reciprocated by Abe, with Modi being one of the only three persons he follows on twitter.

Both India and Japan are wary of China's growing military might and increasing assertive behavior in the Asia Pacific. India, however, prefers to be seen as "neutral" in the escalating power-play between the US, Japan and others on one side and China on the other in the region.

India has largely restricted the Malabar exercise to a bilateral one with the US after China protested against its 2007 edition in the Bay of Bengal since they were expanded to include the Australian, Japanese and Singaporean navies as well.

On the US front, though the flurry of joint combat exercises has slowed down a bit, Indian and American officials in the "initial planning conference" last week decided to hold the Yudh Abhyas exercise at Chaubatia (Uttarakhand) from September 17 to 30.

"The main thrust will be counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in hilly terrain. There will be around 250 troops from each side, including special forces. The two armies usually hold two to three exercises every year but this will be the only one this year," said a source.

Yudh Abhyas, the last edition of which was held at Fort Bragg in the US in May last year, was to be held earlier but got delayed amid the diplomatic wrangling during the Devyani Khobragade episode.

India and the US have held over 70 exercises between their armed forces over the last decade, in what is one of the most evident symbols of their military cooperation. The US, of course, has also bagged Indian arms deals worth almost $10 billion, with the latest being the $1.01 billion one for six additional C-130J "Super Hercules" aircraft, as was first reported by TOI.

The other deals on the anvil are the ones for 22 Apache attack helicopters, 15 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters, four P-8I maritime patrol aircraft and 145 M-777 ultra-light howitzers, together worth another $4 billion or so.