India improves its ranking by 19 places on World Bank Logistics Performance Index

India improves its ranking by 19 places on World Bank Logistics Performance Index

India has improved its ranking in the World Bank Group's bi-annual "Logistics Performance Index 2016", jumping from 54th in 2014 to 35th in 2016. This was announced by the World Bank Group in its recent launch of the report. In the latest ranking India has gone past countries like New Zealand, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, Latvia and Indonesia who were ahead of it in the index. India's jump of 19 positions in the ranking demonstrates the commitment of various Ministries and agencies of Government of India to make it easy to do business in India. Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of World Bank met the Prime Minister of India recently and congratulated him on this achievement.

The World Bank studies the policy regulation as well as supply chain performance outcomes across six sub-indices of the Logistics Performance Index and ranks countries based on their performance in all the indices. It is a perception survey based on the feedback of operators on the ground as they are the people who can best assess the aspects of logistics performance.Feedback of companies responsible for moving goods around the world like multinational freight forwarders and express carriers is taken on a structured online survey. Various aspects of international trade relating to streamlining border clearance procedures, ensuring access to physical infrastructure and quality of logistics services are assessed.

Among the six sub-indices of the Logistics Performance Index, India improved the most on "the efficiency of customs and border management clearance", jumping from 65 in 2014 to 38 in 2016. Recent reforms at Customs, such as the introduction of a Single Window Interface for Trade (SWIFT) and electronic messaging system between Shipping lines and Custodians for electronic delivery order,filing of import and export declarations and manifests online with digital signature,extension of Customs’ risk management system to other regulatory agencies to ensure risk-based inspection, reduction of documents required for export and import, extension of 24x7 customs clearance facilities to 19 seaports and 17 air cargo complexes, removal of limit on the number of consignments released under direct delivery,etc.,have resulted in improvement in the indicator.

India also improved significantly in the following sub-indices:

- The ability to track and trace consignments, improving from 57 to 33;

- The quality of trade and transport infrastructure, improving from 58 to 36; and

- The competence and quality of logistics services, improving from 52 to 32.

On the remaining two sub-indices - the ease of arranging competitively priced shipments and the frequency with which shipments reach consignees within scheduled or expected delivery times - by 5 and 9 places respectively.

The World Bank Group's bi-annual report ‘Connecting to Compete 2016: Trade Logistics in the Global Economy’, launched on Wednesday, captures critical information about the complexity of international trade. The Logistics Performance Index (LPI) within the report scores 160 countries on key criteria of logistics performance.

The scores are based on two sources of information: a worldwide survey of logistics professionals operating on the ground (such as global freight forwarders and express carriers), who provide feedback on the countries in which they operate and with whom they trade; and quantitative data on the performance of key components of the supply chain, such as the time, cost and required procedures to import and export goods.

Global trade depends on logistics and how efficiently countries import and export goods determine how they grow and compete in the global economy. Countries with efficient logistics can easily connect firms to domestic and international markets through reliable supply chains. Countries with inefficient logistics face high costs – both in terms of time and money – in international trade and global supply chains. India’s improvement in Logistics Performance Index is ample evidence that our competitiveness in manufacturing and services is also improving which will provide the required boost to the Make in India programme.

तेजस की पहली स्क्वाड्रन को आज भारतीय वायुसेना शामिल किया जाएगा।

हल्के स्वदेश निर्मित लड़ाकू विमान तेजस की पहली स्क्वाड्रन को आज भारतीय वायुसेना शामिल किया जाएगा। पहली स्क्वाड्रन दो साल के लिए बेंगलुरु में तैनात रहेगी, उसके बाद तमिलनाडु के सुलुर में स्थानांतरित कर दी जाएगी। स्क्वाड्रन के पहले दस्ते को फ्लाइंग ड्रेगर्स 45 नाम दिया गया है। वायुसेना तेजस को पाकिस्तान और चीन द्वारा संयुक्त रूप से विकसित किए गए जेएफ-17 लड़ाकू विमान से बेहतर मानती है। तेजस की आदर्श फाइटर स्क्वाड्रन में कुल 16-17 जेट और एक या दो ट्रेनर्स शामिल होंगे। तेजस मिग 21 और मिग 27 की जगह लेगा।

Two indigenously developed Tejas Light Combat Aircraft were on Friday formally inducted into the Indian Air Force at IAF's Aircraft Systems & Test Establishment in Bengaluru on Friday as part of the first squadron.

They will be part of the new Squadron 45 ‘Flying Daggers’, which will get the remaining 18 aircraft including four trainers in 2018.

A 'Sarva Dharma Pooja' (inter-faith prayer) was conducted before the induction. Such worships are customary at inductions and before staff training sessions, an IAF official said.

A Tejas aircraft flown by Commanding Officer Group Captain Madhav Rangachari performed a sortie during the induction ceremony, attended by Air Marshal Jasbir Walia, Air Officer Commanding-in Chief, Southern Air Command and senior HAL executives.

India today successfully test fired a new surface-to-air missile, from a mobile launcher in the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur

भारत ने आज चांदीपुर रेंज से सवेरे हवा में मार करने वाली नई मिसाइल का मोबाइल लॉंचर से सफल प्रक्षेपण किया। मध्‍यम दूरी की मारक क्षमता वाली यह मिसाइल भारत और इस्राइल ने मिलकर विकसित की है।
• India today successfully test fired a new surface-to-air missile, from a mobile launcher in the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur. The medium range missile, a product of joint venture between India and Israel, was successfully test launched.

India's 1st integrated ‪#‎defence‬ communication network.

India's 1st integrated ‪#‎defence‬ communication network.

ignore the supercomputer race

ignore the supercomputer race
What will matter is who invests most wisely in basic research—the kind of methodical, unglamorous science that might only yield results years in the future
A new list of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers suggests that China might be speeding past the US in the race for technological supremacy. China now holds the two top spots, and placed a total of 167 machines on the list. The US had only 165 on the list, with its fastest placing a very distant third.

That’s leading some American commentators to wring their hands. Wired went so far as to declare a “blow out” in the race for supercomputer supremacy. But as impressive as China’s accomplishment is, there’s no reason to panic. The race for technological dominance won’t be won by measuring who can build faster computers. Instead, what will matter is who invests most wisely in basic research—the kind of methodical, unglamorous science that might only yield results years in the future.

The immediate goal of such research isn’t necessarily a product. But long-term, it might turn into many. Government-funded work on three-dimensional seismic imaging, for instance, helped lay the groundwork for the fracking revolution of recent years. The Human Genome Project, started in 1990, will provide scientists with raw material to cure diseases for decades to come.

“People cannot foresee the future well enough to predict what’s going to develop from basic research,” is how George Smoot, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, once explained it. “If we only did applied research, we would still be making better spears.”

In this, the history of supercomputers is instructive. Bell Labs was doing fundamental research on semiconductors all the way back in the 1940s. Eventually, what they developed was licensed to other companies, including Texas Instruments, which then developed transistors, integrated circuits and other components. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that such technology coalesced into an early version of the supercomputer.

The US dominated supercomputing for two decades, but it was only a matter of time before others piggy-backed on established technology to catch up. In 1981, Japan started a government-backed initiative to develop its own machines. China did the same in 1989. Russia and several European countries have joined the game.

Amid such competition, the title of the world’s fastest supercomputer tends to be a fleeting honorific. And the wisdom of engaging in the race has always been questionable. In 2010, US President Barack Obama’s council of science and technology advisers argued that a “single-minded focus” on increasing speed diverts resources from more creative approaches to computing. In most fields of science and engineering, for instance, performance improvements from more sophisticated algorithms—the mathematical rules used to solve a problem—have topped those from faster processors in recent years.

That kind of inventiveness is often the result of years of patient research—a lesson America shouldn’t forget. Although the US still leads the world in research and development (R&D) funding, as a percentage of gross domestic product, its efforts now lag behind South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. The portion of the federal budget dedicated to R&D has been in decline since 1965.

Meanwhile, the competition for basic research is heating up. Chinese research programmes have historically focused on hitting clearly defined goals, which is one reason that supercomputer speed has been such an appealing benchmark: In 2012, 84% of China’s R&D went to the commercialization of technologies. But policymakers are starting to change their tune. In mid-June, China’s National Science Foundation announced big funding increases for basic research, including cosmic ray physics, mathematics, brain science and infectious diseases.

This is no bad thing. Invigorated competition for basic research would be far more productive than the race to soup up supercomputers. Fields such as synthetic biology, quantum computing and photonics all stand to benefit from a healthy international rivalry. And areas with less obvious pay-offs may prove even more important. Current mysteries such as dark matter might one day turn out to be just as fruitful as one-time mysteries like radio waves. The benefits may not materialize for years or even decades. But if history is any guide, it’s a good bet that they will be worth the wait

World Bank to help India-led solar alliance mobilize $1 trillion

भारत के प्रयासों से शुरू हुए 121 देशों के अंतरराष्ट्रीय सोलर गठबंधन के साथ विश्व बैंक ने एक करार किया है।
भारत की सोलर एनर्जी की जरूरतों को पूरा करने के लिए विश्व बैंक ने भारत को 100 करोड़ ड़ॉलर देने का भी फैसला किया है।
World Bank to help India-led solar alliance mobilize $1 trillion
World Bank to also give India $1 billion loan to expand solar energy generation, including a $625 million grid-connected rooftop solar programme
In a significant push for solar power, the World Bank on Thursday signed an agreement with the International Solar Alliance (ISA)—launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Paris climate summit last year—to mobilize $1 trillion in investments by 2030.

The World Bank will also lend more than $1 billion to support India’s ambitious initiatives to expand solar energy generation, including a $625 million grid-connected rooftop solar programme.

“We signed an agreement with the ISA, consisting of 121 countries led by India, to collaborate on increasing solar energy use around the world, with the goal of mobilizing $1 trillion in investments by 2030. This agreement establishes the World Bank group as a financial partner for the alliance,” World Bank president Jim Yong Kim said at the end of a two-day visit to India.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley and minister for power, coal, and new and renewable energy Piyush Goyal were also present at the signing of the agreement.

The World Bank president said he hoped the agreement would help mobilize the global movement toward a climate-friendly future.

“As part of the agreement, the (World) Bank Group will develop a roadmap to mobilize financing for development and deployment of affordable solar energy, and work with other multilateral development banks and financial institutions to develop financing instruments to support solar energy development,” added Kim.

ISA was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris on 30 November last year by Modi and French President Francois Hollande. The alliance, headquartered in India, aims to bring together countries situated between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn which receive abundant sunshine for around 300 days a year.

Kim met both Modi and Jaitley during his two-day visit.

The multilateral lender will continue to support the Modi government’s renewable energy push, he said.

“The prime minister understands the World Bank better than us and always pushes us to move faster and faster, keeping pace with him,” said Kim, while applauding the Modi government for its Swachh Bharat Mission, which is also partly financed by the Bank.

“India’s plans to virtually triple the share of renewable energy by 2030 will both transform the country’s energy supply and have far-reaching global implications in the fight against climate change. Prime Minister Modi’s personal commitment toward renewable energy, particularly solar, is the driving force behind these investments,” Kim said.

The development of $200 million shared infrastructure for “Solar Parks Project under a public-private partnership model is also under preparation”, said a statement issued by the World Bank, which pointed out that the $1 billion loan is the lender’s largest solar project funding for any country.

Modi has been betting big on solar power since forming the government in May 2014. The National Democratic Alliance government has raised India’s target of solar power from 20,000 megawatts (MW) to 100,000MW by 2022.

Experts welcomed the $1 billion loan from the World Bank to boost India’s solar energy programme. “It is a positive move, but the exact details of the loan—like interest rates—are not clear as yet. Also, more information is needed about technology imports and funding for the rural sector,” said Rakesh Kamal, senior programme manager, climate change, at the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based environmental think tank.

July 1991—the month that changed India

July 1991—the month that changed India
The 1991 reforms had intellectual clarity as well as internal consistency
There is no month as dramatic as July 1991 in Indian economic history. It is now exactly a quarter of a century since Indian economic policy was completely overhauled, in a blitz of inspired action by the minority government led by P.V. Narasimha Rao.

India was still battling a crisis in its external payments. The first moves were naturally on the trade front. The rupee was devalued on the afternoon of 1 July 1991, to test the waters. A bolder second devaluation was announced a mere two days later. The next day, on 4 July, commerce minister P. Chidambaram ended the perverse system of import controls, with a new trade policy that he virtually wrote on his own. He also announced that the rupee would be made convertible on the trade account within three years.

Then came 24 July. Around noon, the government tabled a new industrial policy that demolished the licence raj with a few deft strokes. Finance minister Manmohan Singh stood in Parliament just four hours later to present a landmark budget that set India on a new economic path. All this was done by a minority government led by a man who had shown no previous enthusiasm for economic liberalism.

There are three sets of initiatives that deserve appreciation. First, reformist economists within government had, for at least a decade, patiently created the intellectual climate for a new economic policy. They were involved in the tentative reforms of the previous decade, including some easing of industrial controls as well as the focus on industrial efficiency in the Seventh Five-Year Plan. Much of this fresh thinking was brought together into a famous note circulated internally by Montek Singh Ahluwalia in 1990. A calm study of economic policy debates since the late 1970s should be adequate proof against the silly claim that the 1991 reforms programme was handed on a platter by the International Monetary Fund.

Second, the political management of the reforms was exemplary. Manmohan Singh defended the devaluation in Parliament by reminding politicians that one of the important demands of the Indian national movement was against an overvalued rupee that hurt Indian industry while it benefited the colonial government. The industrial policy statement was presented as a step towards realizing the Nehruvian dream of an industrially advanced India. There were several reminders about the reformist promises made in the Congress election manifesto that Rajiv Gandhi had cleared.

Third, the prime minister became bolder as the days went by, though he also forced the reformers to backtrack when the political costs of any individual step—such as bringing down fertilizer subsidies—threatened the overall process. His early concerns about a steep devaluation, in a country which unfortunately seeks a strong exchange rate as a goal in itself, soon gave way to more confidence. Some of his parliamentary interventions in defence of the economic reforms should not be forgotten. He also reached out to the opposition leaders to explain what dire straits India was in. A lot is also owed to A.N. Varma, who used his perch in the Prime Ministers Office to push civil servants in various ministries to cooperate with the reformers.

Later, the Reserve Bank of India began to deregulate interest rates. The rupee was floated. A committee headed by M. Narasimham laid out a path for financial sector reforms. Another committee headed by Raja Chelliah did the same for tax reforms. The first negotiations on how to end the automatic monetization of fiscal deficits began.

Some of the best economic minds collaborated to design a reforms programme that had intellectual clarity as well as internal consistency. Manmohan Singh’s first budget speech is still a master class in how to think about economic policy—linking structural adjustment to industrial policy to trade policy to employment growth to poverty eradication.

And his powerful ending to the budget speech is worth repeating in full: “I do not minimize the difficulties that lie ahead on the long and arduous journey on which we have embarked. But as Victor Hugo once said, ‘No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.’ I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea. Let the whole world hear it loud and clear. India is now wide awake. We shall prevail. We shall overcome.”

In what ways have the 1991 reforms changed India?