World's First Real Time Transparency introduced

Shri Amitabh Kant, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India inaugurated a new office building constructed for the Intellectual Property Office of India in New Delhi on September 8, 2014. The building is dedicated to the functioning of the Indian Patent Office as International Searching Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
The ISA/IPEA building is constructed under plan scheme of the Government of India, ‘Modernization and Strengthening of Intellectual Property Offices’, at an expenditure of Rs 30.2 crore, provides ample space and facilities for proper management of ISA/IPEA operations. The building has state of the art infrastructure and a hall of fame to showcase & highlight the notable products protected by intellectual property.
A new payment gateway integrated to the e-filing system of the Intellectual Property Office was also inaugurated by Shri Kant. This facility enables payment using internet banking, credit cards or debit cards of more than 70 Banks as against internet banking of 2 banks earlier. The comprehensive e-filing facility covering all Forms was made available earlier by IPO for patents and for trademarks. Through the launch of new payment gateway, the online filing which has already shown a quick leap from 25% to 75 % is expected to increase further.
Speaking on the occasion, the Secretary said that the Intellectual Property Office of India has infrastructure that matches the best in the world. He stated that it is commendable that the office is functioning in a fully electronic environment and has established the highest standards of transparency. He said that this office under the Government of India is a unique blend of great hardware and software. He stressed the importance of intellectual property in upgrading the manufacturing abilities of the fledgling Indian manufacturing sector. He informed that the government will be soon formulating an IPR policy.
During the occasion, Shri Kant released the first issue of “IP Expressions”a technical magazine that provides a platform for the officials of IPO to share the knowledge and experience gained in the field of intellectual property. Starting initially as a biannual publication, the IP Expressions is expected to benefit the IP fraternity, researchers, students, academicians and public at large as a source of IP information.
Shri Amitabh Kant also launched the latest innovation in transparency offered by the Indian Patent Office namely the ‘Stock and Flow’. This facility already existing for trademarks has been extended to patents also from today onwards. Through this facility the work happening in the entire Patent office is being thrown open to the world. The stock and flow in the Patent Offices at different locations is shown on a real time basis on the official website. IPO is the first among intellectual property offices across the world to achieve this ultimate transparency.
Addressing the gathering Shri D V Prasad, Joint Secretary, DIPP said that tremendous administrative reforms have been taking place in the IP offices during the recent years. In transparency initiatives, the office excels other intellectual property offices across the world. He informed that in order to achieve speedy disposal of IP applications, there will be further augmentation of infrastructure and manpower in the intellectual property offices during the 12th Five Year Plan.
The Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks, Shri Chaitanya Prasad in his introductory speech stated that the office is set to further upgrade its infrastructure to fulfill the increasing commitment. The building inaugurated today is planned for eight floors and only two floors along with the basement have been constructed now. Further floors will be constructed during the 12th Plan. IPO believes in absolute transparency and the Controller General expressed hope that the stakeholders would find the newly launched payment gateway as well as the Stock and Flow convenient and satisfactory.

disinvestment in ONGC,NHPC,CIL

Disinvestment of 5 percent paid-up capital in Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. out of Government of India shareholding 

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, today approved the disinvestment of 5 percent paid-up capital in Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Ltd. (ONGC) out of the Government of India’s shareholding of 68.94 percent. 

This would further broad base the shareholding of the Company and would enhance disinvestment receipts.

Background:

ONGC is a "Maharatna" public sector undertaking under the administrative control of the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. It was established in August, 1956 to plan, promote, organize and implement programmes for development of petroleum resources and the production and sale of petroleum products by it.

The paid-up equity capital of the company, as on 31st March, 2014 is Rs.4277 crore. The President of India holds 68.94 percent of the paid up capital in ONGC. In accordance with the Government of India`s disinvestment policy, the Government has decided to disinvest 5 percent paid-up equity in ONGC, out of its equity capital holding of 68.94 percent through Offer for Sale (OFS) method in the domestic market as per Securities and Exchange Borad of India (SEBI) Rules and Regulations. After this disinvestment, the Government of India’s shareholding in the company would come down to 63.94 percent.
Disinvestment of 10 percent paid-up equity capital in Coal India Ltd. out of Government of India shareholding

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, today approved the disinvestment of 10 percent paid-up equity capital in Coal India Ltd. (CIL) out of the Government of India’s shareholding of 89.65 percent.

The decision to disinvest would help the Government to realize an optimum price for the offer for sale of 10 percent of the Government’s shareholding in the company.

Background:

CIL is a Public Sector Enterprise under the administrative control of the Ministry of Coal. Its objective is to produce and market the planned quantity of coal and coal products efficiently and economically, with due regard to conservation of resources, and safety and quality of life of the workforce.

The authorized capital of the CIL is Rs. 8904.18 crore (Rs. 904.18 crore of non-cumulative 10 percent redeemable preference shares plus Rs. 8000 crore of equity shares) of which the issued and subscribed equity capital as on 31.03.2014 is Rs 6316.36 crore. The President of India holds 89.65 percent of the paid up capital in CIL. In accordance with the Government of India`s disinvestment policy, the Government has decided to disinvestment 10 percent equity of CIL out of its holding of 89.65 percent as per the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Rules and Regulations. After this disinvestment, the Government of India`s holding in the company would come down to 79.65 percent.

Disinvestment of 11.36 percent paid-up equity capital of NHPC Ltd. out of Government of India shareholding

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, today approved the disinvestment of 11.36 percent paid up equity capital of NHPC Ltd. out of the Government of India’s shareholding of 85.96 percent.

Increase in public shareholding would provide greater opportunity for the investing public to participate.

Background:

NHPC Ltd. (formerly known as the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Limited) is a Public Sector Undertaking under the administrative control of the Ministry of Power. NHPC has developed and constructed 20 hydroelectric power stations with a total installed capacity of 6,507 MW. NHPC is presently engaged in the construction of four additional hydroelectric projects. This is expected to increase the total installed capacity by 3,290 MW.

The paid up equity capital of the company, as on 31.03.2014 is Rs.11,071 crore. The President of India holds 85.96 percent of the paid up capital in NHPC. In accordance with the Government of India`s disinvestment policy, the Government has decided to disinvest 11.36 percent equity in NHPC, out of its equity capital holding of 85.96 percent through an "Offer for Sale" of Shares through Stock Exchanges, as per SEBI Rules and Regulations. After this disinvestment, the Government of India’s shareholding in the company would come down to 74.60 percent and the company would become compliant to the revised Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules (SCRR) norms of 25 percent for public shareholding in listed CPSEs.

ISRO scientist travels to the ‘edge of space’

Becomes the first Indian to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience

T.N. Suresh Kumar, a senior scientist working with the ISRO’s Master Control Facility in Hassan, has become the first Indian to visit the stratosphere – the second layer of the Earth’s atmosphere.

He made it to an altitude of 17,100 metres on August 15 in a MIG-29 from Sokol Airbase near Nizhny Novgorod in Russia paying a hefty fee of around Rs. 15 lakh from his savings.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and one that I have been dreaming of for two decades. I am happy I did it,” Mr. Kumar told The Hindu on Tuesday.

The flight reached a maximum speed of 1,850 km per hour, reaching the stratosphere in 48 minutes. With this, Mr. Kumar becomes the 259th person and the first Indian to take the flight ever since the Country of Tourism Ltd., an agency conducting space travel in Russia, started the journey called ‘Edge of Space’ six years ago.

“Money alone will not buy oneself this opportunity. They look for physical fitness, communication skills and a basic knowledge of science before selecting people for this journey,” he said.

In fact the selection process began six months ago, after which Mr. Kumar had to take clearances from different agencies, including his workplace and embassies.

Mr. Kumar nurtured space travel dreams since 1985 when he was one among the four selected by ISRO to travel to space. But he missed the chance when the flight was called off following the explosion of space shuttle ‘Challenger’ in February 1986. “It was highly disappointing. Later, my wife and I decided to save a major part of our earnings for travel,” he said.

Mr. Kumar has visited 110 countries across seven continents over the last 15 years. His wife Geetha, also a senior scientist at MCF in Hassan, has accompanied him to 87 countries. Altogether the family has spent over Rs. 50 lakh on travel. “I am a budget traveller and plan the trips well in advance to avoid extra expenditure on airfare. I carry ready-to-eat food and spend little on lodging,” he said

IISc develops molecular "sniffer dog" to detect explosives

they have come up with a highly sensitive fluorescent polymer that scouts out a class of commonly-used explosives

The sniffer dog might finally have its day. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) have created a highly sensitive fluorescent polymer that scouts out a class of commonly used explosives.

TNT and other nitroaromatic compounds, which are used in a cocktail of chemicals in landmines and plastic explosive devices, release vapours that ‘quench’ the polymers, reducing their glow, according to a team from IISc.’s Department of Inorganic and Physical Chemistry.

“The team has developed two types of fluorescent polymers — supramolecular polymers and porous metallic-organic polymer — that are electron-rich and pick up vapour from TNT and other nitroaromatic explosives much like a molecular ‘sniffer dog’,” says P.S. Mukherjee, associate professor at the department and co-author of a paper on the experiment published in the latest edition of Chemistry: A European Journal.

“While the drop in fluorescence is not visible to the naked eye, it is visually sensed and interpreted by a high resolution spectrometer,” Dr. Mukherjee explained.

Nitroaromatic compounds are replacing conventional metal-based weapons in the explosives industry, the research paper says, adding that the compounds are available commercially. Besides their explosive nature, the chemicals contaminate groundwater after military operations and an efficient method to detect them at low concentrations is now needed. “The next step for the teamnow is to develop similar systems to detect other forms of explosives such as RDX and ammonium nitrate.

NASA to map earth forests in 3D

The US space agency, NASA, is developing the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Lidar device to map forests on Earth in 3D and increase understanding of their role in the carbon cycle.

The instrument will be the first to systematically probe the depths of the forests from space.

“GEDI Lidar will have a tremendous impact on our ability to monitor forest degradation, adding to the critical data needed to mitigate the effects of climate change,” said Patrick O’Shea, chief research officer at the University of Maryland.

It is a laser-based system that can measure the distance from the space-based instrument to Earth’s surface with enough accuracy to detect subtle variations, including the tops of trees, the ground, and the vertical distribution of above ground bio-mass in forests.

The instrument will be built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, a NASA release said.

“GEDI will be a tremendous new resource for studying Earth’s vegetation,” said Piers Sellers, deputy director of Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate.

In particular, the GEDI data will provide global-scale insights into how much carbon is being stored in the forest bio-mass.

“This information will be particularly powerful when combined with the historical record of changes captured by the US’s long standing programme of Earth-orbiting satellites, such as Landsat and MODIS,” Sellers added.

By revealing the 3-D architecture of forests in unprecedented detail, GEDI will also provide crucial information about the impact that trees have on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Although it is well-established that trees absorb carbon and store it long-term, scientists have not quantified exactly how much carbon forests contain.

As a result, it’s not possible to determine how much carbon would be released if a forest were destroyed, nor how well emissions could be countered by planting new trees.

The system is one of two instrument proposals recently selected for NASA’s Earth Venture Instrument programme and is being led by the University of Maryland, College Park.

NASA said GEDI is scheduled to be ready in 2018.

A clean-up under scrutiny

It is not surprising that the Supreme Court has taken a dim view of the Central government’s long-running plan to clean the Ganga. More than 28 years after the government launched the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) in 1985, nothing seems to have worked. In 2013, estimates by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said that from Gangotri to Diamond Harbour faecal coliform levels were above acceptable levels on all stretches of the river, except for the upper reaches. Uttar Pradesh, which has a 1,000-km stretch of the river, has over 600 highly polluting industrial units. Of these, 442 are tanneries with toxic discharge, most of them violating pollution norms. An interim report of the Ganga River Basin Management Plan prepared by a consortium of seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) said attempts to keep the river clean through conventional pollution control methods have proved ineffective. Now, the new BJP-led government is planning to restore the “wholesomeness” of the Ganga, which was declared India’s national river in 2008. The National Ganga River Basin Authority has gone into mission mode to identify critical focus areas, and ensuring the continuous flow of the river is the main aim. Dams and barrages have snapped its longitudinal connectivity and crippled it, the IIT report said. The report pointed out that human activity including industrialisation, urbanisation and deforestation, and a complete lack of provision along the river for waste water disposal, have reduced the Ganga to its current condition. The quality of water in the river, once famed for its purity, is abysmal now. And one of the key areas which need attention is ecological restoration.

The National Mission for Clean Ganga envisions that by 2020, no untreated municipal sewage or industrial effluent will flow into the Ganga. Hundreds of crores of rupees from foreign funding agencies and the government has been pledged to clean the river, but as the Supreme Court has observed, the bureaucratic approach has failed to work. In addition, dams are proliferating on the river and its tributaries in an unplanned manner. A report prepared by the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute observed that the Tehri dam had, by blocking the sediments behind it, diminished the unique self-purifying ability of the Ganga. Extensive deforestation in the State of Uttarakhand, a part of the Ganga basin, and dams proposed on major rivers in this State after every 20 to 25 km, could leave large fragments of these rivers with minimal flow, according to a report prepared by a Supreme Court-appointed expert body in 2014. There seems to be no dearth of reports or expert advice on cleaning the Ganga; only the political will and decisive action on the ground are lacking. Perhaps the Supreme Court’s admonition, along with the government’s new resolve, could act as a catalyst for change.

The illiteracy of innovation

The formal economy and the scientific sector deal with advanced technology, while the informal, the world of biomass, craft societies, are treated as lesser worlds with a separate logic. It is a dualism of thought which is quietly destroying huge parts of our culture

Key words in policy frameworks have erratic careers. Some survive with a long shelf life, others sputter out after an initial promise. One thinks of the contrasting fate of two sibling words, planning and governance. Planning is now treated as nostalgia, an outmoded way of coping with federalism, while the concept of governance glows in mint condition, inviting people to make their careers out of it.

There is another word which is older, even more pervasive, which reincarnates itself frequently and haunts the progressive mind. It is all-pervasive, invidious and dominates the technological horizon. It is the word innovation. The power of the word is such that it creates its own folklore, its own coterie of in-words like science-induced innovation, the Schumpeterian innovator, the Kondratieff cycle, the baroquisation of technology. Innovation and ideas of innovation almost dictate the state of literacy of a regime, summoning us to a Darwinian world where only the fittest survive. So powerful is this need for the new, that C.S. Lewis, a classics scholar, better known for his The Chronicles of Narnia, once introduced himself, during one of his inaugural lectures at a university by claiming, “Gentleman, I offer you myself, the dinosaur.”

A forgotten society

A classics scholar or a language professor might state with comfort his ease with tradition, but modern governments are obsessive about innovation or the lack of it. This creates its own politics of anxiety. Innovators are seen as positive, while those who oppose it are dismissed as Luddites.

 “The laboratory is no longer the centre of the universe. The slum and the city also become innovative sites” 

The world view of innovation chains has no place for the defeated, the obsolescent, the outdated. There is no ethics of the defeated other. We have an ethics for the cyborg, an ethics of the robot, but no ethics of alternative worlds, ecological niches. A.K. Coomaraswamy cites the case of a housewife who refuses a washing machine, asking “what will happen to my washer man?”

Innovation is a form of forgetting, of erasure in the name of improvement. To the West, what justifies innovation or revolution is museumisation, a process of embalming cultures which are dead or dying. The cultures which could not survive or adapt are subject to the objectifying gaze of science. Innovation as progress has its charms, but as erasure, obsolescence, waste and ecocide raises a whole gamut of questions about the violence of science and technology. India, unlike the West, cannot eliminate defeated cultures. They do not belong to the reservations. The handloom weaving community includes 13 million people. Shifting cultivation as a practice caters to a few million. But vulnerable communities are not just marginal groups, but include even the middle class, many of whom are dumped for being outdated. In the global regimes of today, an obsolescent society is a forgotten society. Worse, it is a dispensable society.

Living traditions

The illiteracy of an innovation chain stems from the impoverishment of time, the indifference of history to defeated cultures. From an Indian viewpoint, tribes and crafts are not defeated cultures but living traditions. The question is this: how is technology looking at such livelihoods? How does policy respond to an Ikkat weaver? I remember Syeda Hameed of the now defunct Planning Commission asking this: “do we go in for Chinese stuff, or ask whether the Chinese can weave an ikkat like this, where every weave of cloth is like the flow of a river?” Or do we, as George Fernandes once did, declare the use of clay khullars compulsory in railway stations, banning thermocool and plastic? Of course, today, we might have to face the fact that the soil from which the clay comes might be contaminated. Do we ask, as my friends in Dastkar do, how can we sustain the breathtaking Indigo blue of a Yellappa, working with primitive vats where he uses his sensorium as a substitute for instruments? What do we think of a scientist who celebrates Bakelite but has nothing to say about the wondrous world of Lac that it destroyed? Or think again. Are people who defend traditional seeds backward or are they trustees of seed as memory and a collective commons in the age of genetically modified seeds? Do we save the Varanasi weaver or prefer the Surat power loom?

Dualism of thought

Our current discourse deals with these questions in a fragmented, absent-minded way. The formal economy and the scientific sector deal with advanced technology, while the informal, the world of biomass, craft societies, are treated as lesser worlds with a separate logic. It is as if the third world in us is treated as the third class, or third rate, that the poor have to be content with a third rate science. It is a dualism of thought which is quietly destroying huge parts of our culture.

The task before policy, the state, in fact all democratic societies, is how we mediate between different technological traditions which are also different cultural traditions. As the late chemist, C.V. Seshadri, said, these are not just ethical questions but constitutional ones. Our science laboratories and governance groups have to answer these: do we prioritise nanotechnology and biotechnology or are we as a society plural enough to arbitrate between different worlds? These are practical questions. Do Irula tribals who are knowledgeable about snakes have a place in our biodiversity policy as trustees and custodians or do they have to be treated as poachers, intrusions into the scientific world? Similarly, are scavengers, kabbadiwallas, who are geniuses of waste, a part of the dream of policy or do we make their classificatory genius alien to the Linnaean cosmos? How do we create a frame to adjudicate conceptually between such worlds?

One of the concepts proposed which developed out of the battle of social movements was cognitive justice. This referred to a world where the right of different knowledges to coexist was recognised. The world of innovation chains was no longer science-centred but included the innovative world of citizen inventors, where ordinary people solving problems in innovative ways was recognised. The honeybee initiative captures thousands of such innovations. Once we see democracy itself as problem-solving, we have to work for the democratisation of knowledge systems. The laboratory is no longer the centre of the universe. The slum and the city also become innovative sites. In such a world, the informal economy and its innovative styles are treated as epistemologies, theories of knowledge. The scavenger, the hawker are seen as experts in survival, inventing their way through the problem sets of the city. Such an opening of the innovation chain beyond the control of scientific experts, opens up innovation to ideas beyond the professional, to ideas which stem from all forms of practice. The Silicon Valleys of the mind emerge in the slums and villages where new forms of city-making, garbage clearance and recycling are being worked out. Innovation sounds more open-ended and inclusive now. I am not denying the power of a Monsanto and a Microsoft; I am only testifying to the existence of the other worlds. Hindustan Lever is huge but the entire network of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) or the garbage industry is not modest either. All three provide value for money in different ways.

Rethinking innovation

Our nation is at a stage where we are rethinking the very nature of institutions and institutional building. We are rethinking the very process of planning. At this stage, we need to rethink the categories of innovation. If we were to imagine a national innovation council, one cannot think of a Xerox Park and a Silicon Valley alone. One has to locate them within a culture, juxtapose scientific innovation to linguistic and musical innovation and learn how other traditions also innovate with rigor, yet have ethics of memory. An innovation council which represents dyes, bamboo, weaving as well as biotechnology and IT would be more representative. One has to realise that an authority on crafts like Laila Tyebji or Uzramma is as crucial to innovation as a TCS or an Infosys. A friend added that he is a new form of scavenger. “Innovation theory,” he said, “needs both the iconography of technology and the iconoclast as innovator but without this balance, the disruptiveness of innovations can be disastrous.” He claimed that he cleaned up after the consequences of the innovations providing solace, alternatives, employment and possibilities for survival. I cannot see the current regime adapt this way but maybe society can accept this challenge.