NATGRID wants to link social media accounts to central database

The ambitious National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) project wants to link social media accounts to the huge database of records related to immigration entry and exit, banking and telephone details among others.

The project, initially started in 2009 with a budget of ₹2,800 crore, is an online database for collating scattered pieces of information and putting them on one platform. At least 10 central agencies like Intelligence Bureau (IB), Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) and others will have access to the data on a secured platform.

The proposal has received resistance from the intelligence agencies, whose officials fear that linking the social media accounts to sensitive government data could expose the system to “trojan attacks.”


Home Minister Amit Shah reviewed the progress of NATGRID at North Block on Thursday.

The project gathered pace in 2016, when the NDA government appointed an IB officer Ashok Patnaik as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). After Mr. Patnaik retired, NATGRID is now headed by IAS officer Ashish Gupta.

Mr. Shah was given a presentation on the present status of NATGRID but no decision was taken on structural issues.

An official explained that NATGRID links intelligence and investigation agencies.


The 10 user agencies will be linked independently with certain databases that would be procured from 21 providing organisations and include telecom, tax records, bank, immigration, etc. to enable the generation of intelligence inputs.

“Linking the database to social media accounts could jeopardise the entire exercise as it could be exposed to unknown virus attacks from open source Internet,” a senior government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Intelligence agencies had also earlier opposed the NATGRID itself amid fears that it would impinge on their territory and possibly result in leaks on the leads they were working on to other agencies.

An expression of interest (EOI) issued by NATGRID in 2017 had said “NATGRID is intending to set up an Entity Extraction, Visualization and Analytics (EVA) system that would collect and analyse information available from various data sources.”

While NATGRID’s data recovery centre in Bengaluru has been constructed, its office complex in South Delhi is nearing completion.

In January, NATGRID revived its EOI to select a System Integrator (SI) to provide a software solution, recommend hardware specification for running the solution and integrating and implementing the composite EVA solution. The EOI specified that the company bidding for the project should have a turnover of at least ₹1,600 crore.

Source: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/natgrid-wants-to-link-social-media-accounts-to-central-database/article29402252.ece

Quality of growth matters: Higher growth will happen when its composition and spread improves, not merely the topline

Last month, global investment strategist Ruchir Sharma set the dovecotes aflutter when he declared that for countries like India, “5% (GDP growth) is the new 7%, the appropriate aspirational standard.”

He based his growth pessimism on the emergence of four Ds – deglobalisation, depopulation (a shrinking global labour force), declining productivity, and a debt overhang as big as the one in 2008. Almost on cue, India’s GDP number for the first quarter of 2019-20 (April-June) fell with a thud to 5%.

Few Indian economists will agree with Sharma’s formulation, for if India has to accept 5% as the new aspirational benchmark, there is little chance of providing jobs to our still growing working age population. According to estimates made in the Economic Survey 2018-19, even though the rate of growth of the working age population is slowing due to the fall in total fertility rates across states, the projected annual increase in the working age population during 2021-31 will be 9.7 million, before falling further to 4.2 million in the following decade. In short, till at least 2041, the overall size of our working age population will keep growing, even if at a steadily slowing pace.

So, we do need higher growth. However, the choice is never a binary one, between slower and faster growth. Some nuance is lost in this kind of thinking, for we need policies that improve the quality of the growth, regardless of whether we grow at 5% or 7% plus.


Illustration: Chad Crowe

Since it is impossible to predict global growth conditions, demographics and productivity even a couple of years hence, what we need are all-weather policies that ensure good outcomes regardless of the actual GDP growth number. For the last decade or more, the economy’s employment elasticity has been falling. The 12th plan estimated it at 0.19, and Azim Premji University’s ‘State of Working India 2018’ put it at 0.1. An elasticity figure of 0.1 implies that for every 10% growth in GDP, employment grows only 1%.

During the Vajpayee years, despite lower growth, employment grew by nearly 60 million between 1999 and 2004. In the next five years, and especially in the boom-boom UPA-1 years, employment growth was just a few million.

This does not imply that fewer jobs were created in the UPA years; just that fewer people were willing to work at the wage rates available. This is consistent with the sharp fall in poverty rates during the UPA period, which made many women drop out of the workforce – and the trend continues.

This leads us to two broad hypotheses: The quality of jobs in the Vajpayee era was poor, but jobs at those wages were aplenty even with low growth. The quality of growth in the UPA era was poor, which is why even at rising wage levels, people were dropping out of the workforce.

For policy makers, the message should be clear: Don’t focus on just growth, but on its subcomponents. It is possible to have high growth with very few worthwhile jobs, but it is equally possible to have good quality jobs even with lower growth. This means not just macroeconomic policies, but microeconomic ones matter.

All economists would agree, for example, that we need factor reforms (freeing land and labour markets) and agricultural market reforms. Only if we free the markets for agri-produce will farmers benefit from increased productivity by, first, catering to a bigger national market and then to a global market. If this does not happen, every bountiful harvest will lead to a crash in prices and farm misery – precisely our story over the last few years.

In the last decade or more, we had jobless growth because capital markets were liberalised before the labour and land markets, as a result of which employers liberally used capital and automation when humans could have been employed in larger numbers.

We invested in capital intensive sectors like petroleum refining, when more job creating sectors like apparel, furniture and leather works should have been encouraged with easier labour laws. We focussed on subsidising agriculture because politicians loved to play sugar daddy to farmers, when the focus should have been on policies to create more non-agricultural jobs, especially in urban areas, to absorb the workers who want to leave low-income agriculture.

We need the right kind of urbanisation policies – which means allowing land prices to be driven by real demand and supply, and not artificially constrained by arbitrary building laws and zoning rules. But land reforms and rational building laws cannot happen without getting politicians out of the way. It is no secret that most politicians hold their ill-gotten wealth in real estate, and they resist a fall in prices since this would destroy their wealth.

Similarly, foreign investment in job creating sectors will come only if our legal system works faster. The World Bank’s Doing Business 2019 report showed India’s ranking rising to 77 from 100, but our performance in two vital areas – enforcing contracts (rank 163 among 190) and registering property (154) barely budged. Without the ability to buy property and enforce contracts, two big job-creating sectors – construction and real estate – will simply underperform.

The short point is this: If we want to improve the lot of our citizens and create worthwhile jobs, we need to focus on the micro reforms involving specific sectors. Higher growth will happen when the composition and spread of growth improves, and not merely the topline. The quantum of growth is less important than its quality.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/quality-of-growth-matters-higher-growth-will-happen-when-its-composition-and-spread-improves-not-merely-the-topline/

Would you like to be a Times Scholar?

It’s time for India’s young to reach for the moon. At The Times of India, we have always believed it our duty to create a responsible class of citizens — discerning and humane — by encouraging the young to read to broaden their vision, raise their aspirations and discover that learning can be pleasurable.

The internet is spewing out information and entertainment faster than can be meaningfully processed. This is an age of distractions, and it makes the need to read indispensable. A person who reads widely can sort out the chaff, can distinguish right from wrong, fact from fiction, and read the grey. What better time to start than when the mind is young and can be moulded by the written word?


More than a year has gone by since The Times of India first introduced a programme based on reading that led to scholarships and prizes for meritorious students.





It is time to rekindle the spark. The Times Scholars 2019 programme, one of the country’s finest scholarship initiatives, is back. It seeks to equip students with these skills and, at the same time, reward them in the process.

Based firmly in the concept that a well-read scholar is better prepared to seize every opportunity the world offers, the programme is rooted in the newspaper.





A person aspiring to be a Times Scholar will be required, after registration, to read TOI each day, specifically the article or news graphic carrying the “Times Scholars” marker. These will be the syllabus on which the student will be tested. They will cover science, technology, social issues, politics, global developments, economics, education, and much more. It is expected to both inform and delight a sharp, young mind.

Young scholars will also be able to test themselves with weekly practice exams and occasional submission of presentations, all entirely online. While not mandatory, participation in these tests and presentations will add one mark each to the candidate’s cumulative score in the programme — marks for the taking in this highly competitive programme.


These will be followed by a final online multiple-choice test with questions based on articles a candidate would have read in TOI. The best and brightest will then go into personal interviews, which will decide the winners.


The winners will not only receive acknowledgement in the pages of India’s leading English daily but will also win Dell laptops. Also, for candidates in Class XII, selected students will be eligible for admission to undergraduate courses at Bennett University on a scholarship applicable for one year if they fulfill the university’s eligibility criteria.


To get started, register here. You may end up with a title that’ll sit proudly on your resume.

(Dell Aarambh is the Digital Learning partner of the Times Scholars programme)




Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/would-you-like-to-be-a-times-scholar/articleshowprint/71118203.cms

Lots of minds in India capable of becoming great scientists: Nobel laureate Serge Haroche

TNN | Sep 14, 2019, 06.39 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Serge Haroche, who was awarded the 2012 Nobel prize for physics for ground-breaking findings in quantum physics, said that "it is very important to train children in science, especially those whose families don't have science background, as there are lots of minds in India and the world who are capable of becoming great scientists".

In an interview with TOI at the Swedish embassy here, the Nobel laureate talked about India's moon mission and a slew of scientific projects. He said, "I have come to know that India has lost contact with its lunar probe. But this is science, failures are bound to happen. You have to learn from these experiences and do better next time." Earlier in Mohali, he had hoped that Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) would "certainly fix the problem with Vikram lander".

On talking about the world's interest in Moon, Serge Haroche said, "Moon has always interested us. In the US (Apollo) programme that started 50 years ago, we found something strange. America had sent 12 people to land on Moon starting from 1969 and after the manned mission in 1972, everything stopped and the interest disappeared. But Moon is still an interesting subject. Israel had recently sent its probe but it crashlanded. Failures will happen in science, it is life. But science should not be done only for prestige."



On the correlation between Moon and Earth, he said, "Moon is responsible for tides on Earth because of its gravitational effect. This gravitational effect on Earth also has its influence on Moon and its trajectory."

What asked what was the need to measure Earth-Moon distance like a Nasa payload (laser reflector array) on board Vikram lander was supposed to do when scientists knew the distance was 3.84 lakh km, Serge Haroche said, "We have to do measurements for precision. We have to find out that what we had measured corresponds with theory. This is basic science."

The French physicist had shared the Nobel prize jointly with David J Wineland for doing "ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems", a study of the particle of light, the photon. After a PhD dissertation on dressed atoms under the supervision of Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (himself a Nobel Prize recipient) from 1967 to 1971, he had developed new methods for laser spectroscopy, based on the study of quantum beats and superradiance.

On the importance of laser in space science, the Nobel laureate said: "Laser is very important as it can be used to find out the distance between two subjects with precision." On the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory (LIGO) project, he said, "Great work is being done in this direction. Two antennas (detectors or observatories) have been set up in the US (Louisiana and Washington), one in Europe (Italy). I think one is being set up in India and the other one in Japan. This project will help in gravitational wave detection. The more antennas you have, better it is because than you can locate the place in space and the distance of the source of gravitational waves. It will be a new window to the universe. We can detect lots of events."



He also talked in great length and the significance of the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) project, the first dedicated space-based gravitational wave detector that aims to measure gravitational waves directly by using laser interferometry. The LISA concept has a constellation of three spacecraft arranged in an equilateral triangle with sides 2.5 million km long, flying along an Earth-like heliocentric orbit. These three spacecraft relay laser beams back and forth between the different spacecraft and the signals are combined to search for gravitational wave signatures that come from distortions of spacetime. Nasa is a major collaborator in the European Space Agency (ESA)-led mission, which is scheduled to be launched in early 2030s.



On the recent discovery of water on an exo-planet K2-18b, Haroche said, "It is a big field of scientific research to find water in a star system. Twenty years ago, it was very difficult to make such discoveries in such planets. Now, big progress is being made. Not only you can detect such planets but you can detect molecules in their atmosphere. However, the result is tentative and a lot of research is needed."



The Nobel laureate was in India to be part of a new travelling exhibition, "For the greatest benefit to humankind", which was inaugurated on September 11 in Mohali. The world premiere was part of the Nobel Prize Series India 2019, a three-day programme that was organised in Ludhiana and Delhi to highlight issues related to education and learning. Under this programme, Haroche and Kailash Satyarthi, receipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, interacted with people. The Nobel laureate was accompanied by Juleen Zierath, professor of clinical integrative physiology and a member of the Nobel Committee at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. They both gave lectures and took part in round-table discussions with students, teachers and researchers. Both the intellectuals shared with people their work experience and expertise in their respective fields. The objective of such exhibitions and exchange programmes is to hightlight how Nobel laureates have made the world a better place, showcasing discoveries and achievements that have saved lives, fed humanity, connected people and protected the planet.



"The Nobel Prize Series inspires people to seek knowledge, ask questions and contribute to improving the world. By sharing achievements and stories of Nobel laureates with a global audience, the programme encourages engagement in science, literature and peace in line with Alfred Nobel's vision," says Laura Sprechmann, CEO of Nobel Media.

Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/lots-of-minds-in-india-capable-of-becoming-great-scientists-noble-laureate-serge-haroche/articleshowprint/71120749.cms (Accessed on September 14, 2019)

Infosys, TCS enjoy best prospects to deliver growth outperformance

Overall our price targets for 5 top-tier companies rise by 2-10%, as a result of the changes.
Infosys best placed near-term, on both growth & margin.

Our recent meetings with Infosys & Wipro and channel checks suggest a mixed picture with rising risks in BFSI but continued overall deal momentum for select companies. Benefit of recent INR-USD depreciation will be offset to some extent by cross ccy headwinds. We expect continued divergent growth across companies with Infosys best placed in the near term. Amidst our positive stance towards IT services as a relative defensive, TCS & TechM are our other Buys.

Infosys best placed near-term, on both growth & margin

We maintain near-term visibility is best for Infosys amongst top-tier companies given its strong deal win momentum. We expect revenue growth for FY20e to surprise positively at 11.5% y-o-y constant ccy vs. its latest guidance of 8.5-10%. This implies 11% y-o-y growth for rest of FY20e. Despite visible margin pressures across companies in Q1, we also expect Infosys’ FY20e Ebit margin to meet the mid-point of its guided range at 22%, implying 22.5% for rest of FY20e.


Adjusting estimates, PT for ccy & other factors

We adjust our estimates to factor in weaker INR vs. USD but stronger cross currency headwinds. We temper our growth expectations for FY20e in some cases to reflect rising macro risks. We also introduce FY22e estimates and roll forward our price targets. We raise valuation multiple for Infosys as we expect its discount to TCS to narrow. Overall our price targets for 5 top-tier companies rise by 2-10%, as a result of the changes.

Infosys, TCS remain preferred picks

We maintain our positive stance on Indian IT services as a relative defensive. TCS & Infosys remain our preferred picks as we believe these are best placed to deliver growth outperformance, which should also drive better margin defence. We believe risk-reward is favourable for Tech Mahindra given improving communications outlook – recent large AT&T deal will add. Despite its recent deal win momentum, we maintain Hold on HCL Tech given risks from high inorganic contribution. Maintain U/P on Wipro given consistent growth underperformance.

Source: https://www.financialexpress.com/market/infosys-tcs-enjoy-best-prospects-to-deliver-growth-outperformance/1705843/

TCS to help students build skills in a fun way

Tata Consultancy Services is now accepting registrations for the second edition of TCS iON IntelliGem, a national-level contest for students from class 5 to 9.





Representational image (File |Reuters)
By Express News Service

Tata Consultancy Services is now accepting registrations for the second edition of TCS iON IntelliGem, a national-level contest for students from class 5 to 9. Registrations will be accepted only through schools till September 20.

IntelliGem is structured as a test, which helps young learners develop 21st century skills in five areas — creativity and innovation, communication, financial literacy, universal values, and global citizenship. Students who clear the qualifying round, which is a computer-based test, are ready to compete in the city round, which leads to the pre-finals, and then the grand finale, which will be held in Mumbai. It will consist of buzzer rounds and one-to-ones with an expert panel.

Participants will have free access to digital learning content to help them prepare. Teachers from all the participating schools will get access to the TCS iON Teachers’ Network, which hosts a vast pool of learning resources.

For more details and to register your school, visit http://intelligem.tcsion.com/

Source: http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil-nadu/2019/sep/14/tcs-to-help-students-build-skills-in-a-fun-way-2033380.html

Brain drain from academics is hurting economy

The study, the first of its kind, was conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester. They found that over the last 15 years, 153 artificial intelligence professors in North American universities left their posts for industry. Another 68 moved into industry while retaining part-time roles with their universities.


SAN FRANCISCO: For years, big tech companies have used huge salaries, bonuses and stock packages to lure artificial intelligence experts out of academia. Now, a study released on Friday says that migration has hurt the post-college prospects of students.

The study, the first of its kind, was conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester. They found that over the last 15 years, 153 artificial intelligence professors in North American universities left their posts for industry. Another 68 moved into industry while retaining part-time roles with their universities.

From 2004 to 2009, 26 university professors moved into industry. In 2018 alone, 41 professors made the move. The exponential rise in departures over the last decade and a half indicates that the trend will continue. The talent shift could accelerate the development of artificial intelligence inside tech giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple.

But at the universities the professors left behind, graduating students were less likely to create new AI companies. When they did, they attracted smaller amounts of funding, according to the study. The effect was most pronounced in the field of “deep learning,” a technology that has become a crucial part of new AI systems.

In time, the brain drain from academia could hamper innovation and growth across the economy, the study argued. “The knowledge transfer is lost, and because of that, so is innovation,” said Michael Gofman, a professor of finance at the University of Rochester and one of the authors of the study.

Deep learning is driven by “neural networks,” complex mathematical systems that can learn tasks on their own by analysing vast amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of dog photos, for instance, a neural network can lear n to recognise a dog.

Big tech companies have hired many of the academics who specialized in the technique. Three longtime academics recently won the Turing Award — often called the Nobel Prize of computing — for their work on neural networks. Two have moved into industry, one to Google and the other to Facebook.

Tech and automobile industry’s interest in artificial intelligence of all kinds has increased, according to the study. Google and DeepMind, both owned by Alphabet, have hired 23 professors. Amazon has hired 17 professors. Microsoft has hired 13 professors. And Uber, Nvidia and Facebook have each hired seven.

Tech companies disagree with the notion that they are plundering academia. A Google spokesman, for example, said the company is an enthusiastic supporter of academic research.

The study found that students most affected by the departures were those who graduated four to six years later, meaning they probably had little interaction of the departing professors. At any given university, a significant increase in the number of departing professors reduced the number of AI entrepreneurs by 13%.

Experts are split on whether a decline in the startup economy will harm the progress of AI. But many agree that university funding should be increased to ensure that the next generation is properly educated.

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