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GoM accepts Chawla panel recommendations on natural resources

Ms. Roopshree Nair is finance correspondent with news agency Press Trust of India (PTI). Her job is to keep close eyes on Finance Ministry. She covers Dept. of Economic Affairs and Dept. of Revenue.

New Delhi, Oct 13: The government has accepted most of the recommendations of an expert panel on allocation of natural resources that favours a move towards market-linked solutions, according to sources in the Finance Ministry.

The committee headed by former Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla was formed earlier this year to suggest and recommend ways and means for distributing natural resources like minerals in a transparent manner.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) has accepted all recommendations of the Chawla Committee, except one, that relates to seeking permission of the Supreme Court to evolve guidelines for de-reservation of land currently classified as forest land.

Recognising that the proposed Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation Act (MMDRA) is a significant step towards modernising and reforming India’s mining industry, the panel has recommended that sections on bidding should be broad-based and allow states to move towards clear and appropriate bidding processes.

The proposed Act should not preclude any form of open, transparent and competitive bidding, it said.

The committee has also recommended making amendments to the draft MMDR Act such that an independent regulator is tasked with reviewing licensing systems and towards designing a more competitive bidding process.

The panel also calls for the incidence and structure of royalty to be reviewed “through a transparent process” to represent a fair value for the mineral, as it is the primary source of revenue.

The panel has also suggested that for large mining leases, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) as in the case of ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) could be established in which all preliminary clearances for mining can be embedded.

It also recommends that for minerals likely to be found as surfacial deposits without making use of high technology, state governments should be incentivised and enabled to take up exploration so that adequately prospected ore bodies can be put to bid.

Besides, on the petroleum sector, the panel recommends expediting the creation of a National Data Repository (NDR) by linking databases of National Oil Companies (NOCs) and other private firms to share the data for blocks for which information has been submitted to the government.

All other information with the Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) can be structured as a common database, it added. On the issue of de-reservation of land which is currently classified as forest land, the government is understood to have said that this may not be accepted because the Supreme Court has in a past order clarified that forest will not only include forest as understood in dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in the government record irrespective of ownership.

Moreover, sources added, many areas which are currently barren are important and unique wild life habitats. The sectors examined by the panel include land, mining, coal, petroleum, natural gas, telecom, forests and water.

What has killed 500 children in India?

Country's national child rights commission has ordered the government of Uttar Pradesh to report on the status of an encephalitis epidemic that media reports claim has killed as many as 500 children in the poverty-afflicted state over the past two months, the Times of India reports.

In a letter to the state chief secretary, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights ( NCPCR) said that the issue amounted to violation of 'children's right to life, survival and development,' the paper said.

Almost always first reported as a "mystery virus" or "mystery fever," epidemics of encephalitis have become an annual ritual in northern India over the past several years, seemingly without any aggressive government action to combat the problem.

Jobs, well done..!

The real challenge before me or anyone else is to write about Steve Jobs that isn't already written.

3 Apples changed the world, 1st one seduced Eve, 2nd fell on Newton and the 3rd was offered to the world half bitten by Steve Jobs. That’s the way God carved the world as it is. Jobs, as we know was not a computer scientist- ignorant of both hardware and software before he made Apple what it is today. From PC to MP3 player to ubiquitous smartphones- all existed before Apple got there.

Then what really was Job’s contribution in making Apple what it is today? The answer is- he just reinvented the entire industry. Jobs did something that few would have dreamt of achieving. He rigorously experimented with both old and the news technology, be it PCs or the old world music – with incredible fastness.

The most cherished and acknowledged CEO of his age Jobs defied many tenets of business astutely. He never believed in consumer research, never did he conduct any market survey. With simplicity at his sleeves, he rarely flaunted his’ corporation clout. He believed in the wisdom of his instinct. His intuition about Apple was nearly flawless and we saw the products always lived up to his towering claims.

This year Apple’s market captalisation crossed that of Exxon Mobil, making it the planet’s most valuable company. This feat but does not come without initial hiccups. For nearly first 20-years of his career, Jobs lived with notorious reputation of being associated with many products that failed in the market. The failures were so immense that he was handed pinkslip by the same company he co-founded. Steve was literally kicked out of the Apple. The impression was palpable -Jobs lost to indomitable Bill Gates. But then this was only true for those years until iPod arrived at the stage. Jobs legacy would have died unnoticed, unsung -but that was not to happen.

Born in 1955 in San Francisco to an unmarried graduate student and adopted at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley just as it was becoming Silicon Valley.

Time magazine claims that the company was co-founded with Steve “Woz” and Ron Wayne on April fool’s day in the year 1976, i.e. 4-years before I was born. He was 21-years old. Woz loved computers and Jobs wanted to make money out of it. The inside of their first product Apple II was more of Woz’s technical genius and Job’s style statement. In times when PCs were looked as ‘moronic’ machines, Apple’s design was fresh elegance in the offing. Apple II soon became the bestseller.

Jobs was source of inspiration for his co-workers. Hardworking and perfectionist to core he always liked to have intelligent people around him. Those who didn’t fit into this were brutally shown the doors. Some call him autocratic, but that’s the way geniuses are.

In 1985, Jobs was handed over the pinkslip after his failure to boost the company’s Macintosh sales. Post-Apple Jobs started Pixar- an animation film company. After initial shocks in 1995 Disney released Pixar’s first feature, Toy Story, which became year’s top-grossing movie and gave Jobs his first taste of success. Meanwhile Apple’s fortunes were drowning faster than expected. 1996 saw Jobs returning to Apple.

During his first months back at Apple, Jobs dumped board members, cut staff, slashed costs, killed dozens of products and accepted a $150 million lifeline from perennial bête noire Microsoft. Jobs rolled out an advertising campaign — "Think Different" — that got people talking about the company again. And he presided over the release of the striking all-in-one iMac, which came in a translucent case crafted by Jonathan Ive, the British industrial designer who would be responsible for every major Apple product to come. In 1998, it became the best-selling computer in America.

Little by little, Jobs started acting less like a turnaround artist and more like a man who wanted, once again, to change the world. Then came the iPod, and rest they say is a history of innovations and reinventions.

Thank you Jobs. You made the ugly world of technology, beautiful for us.

Jobs died at 56. I have 25 years left to achieve what Jobs did. Let’s see.