Massive spike in foreign flows into market
Commercial pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) efforts are encouraged and rewarded through the earnings that innovators derive from sales of their branded products. These earnings largely depend on the 20-year product patents they are entitled to obtain in WTO member states. Such patents give them a temporary monopoly, enabling them to sell their new products without competition at a price far above manufacture and distribution costs, while still maintaining a substantial sales volume. In the United States, thousandfold (100000%) markups over production costs are not atypical. In India, the profit-maximising monopoly price of a new medicine is much lower, but similarly unaffordable for most citizens. To be sure, before such huge markups can yield any profits, commercial pharmaceutical innovators must first cover their large R&D costs, currently ₹14 lakh crore a year (Mikulic 2020), including the cost of clinical trials needed to demonstrate safety and efficacy, the cost of capital tied up during the long development process, and the cost of any research efforts that fail somewhere along the way.
Foreign portfolio investors have bought shares worth ₹20,814 crore in just five trading sessions in June.
In just under a week in June, the quantum of foreign flows in the equity market has surpassed that of any other month in the current calendar year.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have bought shares worth nearly ₹21,000 crore — ₹20,814 crore to be precise — in just five trading sessions in the current month. This is the highest in any month of 2020, with the previous high registered in May at ₹14,569 crore.
Market participants are of the view that the sudden surge has been on account of the Rights Issue of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), stake sale in Kotak Mahindra Bank, and the slight uptick in optimism even as pandemic concerns continue to linger.
“These two corporate events saw major participation by FPIs,” said Arjun Yash Mahajan, head, Institutional Business, Reliance Securities, while referring to RIL’s Rights Issue, and Uday Kotak selling 2.83% stake in Kotak Mahindra Bank.
“Add to these two events, the broader benchmark Nifty saw a breakout and added over 4.5% since the close on 29 May. The current rally has seen money flow into sectors like automobiles, private banks and pharmaceuticals as there was continued hope of the worst being behind,” added Mr. Mahajan.
RIL’s Rights Issue — the country’s largest at ₹53,124.20 crore — closed on June 3 and was subscribed 1.59 times with many foreign institutional investors putting in significant bids.
On Tuesday, Uday Kotak sold shares worth around ₹6,800 crore of Kotak Mahindra Bank, which were bought by FPIs like the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, T. Rowe Price, Aberdeen Asset Management, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Oppenheimer Developing Market Fund, among others.
The cumulative foreign flows in equities this year however, is still negative at ₹19,531 crore, since March and April saw huge outflows.
Incidentally, March witnessed a record outflow of ₹61,973 crore, which was followed by selling worth ₹6,884 crore in April.
According to Mr. Mahajan, while the current rally is based on optimism, investors need to be cautious and can even look at booking some profits and wait for better entry levels amidst the coronavirus pandemic-led disruptions caused in April and May.
Foreign portfolio investment : FPI) refers to investing in the financial assets of foreign country such as stocks of bonds available exchange. This time of investment is at time view less favourability then direct investment and be quickly and are at times seen as short term attains to make money rather then a long term investment in the economy.
Portfolio investmentTypically has a shorter time frame for investment return than direct investment
The scientific process must be protected from those seeking power and riches
Two weeks ago, a study in The Lancet, perhaps the most influential medical journal in the world, found no benefit from the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a well-known antimalarial, to treat sick COVID-19 patients. Today, that study stands retracted. As it had relied on a huge dataset of about 96,000 patients sourced from 671 hospitals in six continents, the World Health Organization, citing a ‘do no harm’ principle, suspended drug trials pending a safety review. This led to some countries in Europe withdrawing the drug from their own trials. Another study involving some of the same authors and relying on the same data published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which sought to answer questions on the associations between cardiovascular disease, COVID-19 and drugs that target the enzymes that play a role in facilitating the virus in attacking a host, has also been retracted. The Lancet study triggered a backlash from scientists who found problems with the methodology and, more importantly, the dataset. It emerged that mortality attributed to the disease in Australia did not match with the country’s own estimates; there was no way to tally patient records and the hospitals they were sourced from; and there were problems with the statistics deployed and the conclusions about the potential risk from the drug.
The bigger concern was that the data was supplied by Surgisphere Corporation, which had a handful of employees with limited scientific expertise, and claimed to have aggregated its numbers by compiling electronic health records in less than two months. Experienced clinical trial specialists said this was a labour-intensive process. Moreover, when aspersions about the data started to swirl, the company, citing client confidentiality, said it was unable to share its data sources for independent assessment. In their retractions, the journals have blamed Surgisphere for being opaque with its primary data. So far, neither journal has introspected on the peer-review process that led to these studies being published in the first place. In hindsight it seems obvious that a disinterested analysis would have raised eyebrows regarding data sourcing, but the post-COVID world is a panic-driven one that has left no institution or appraisal process untouched. The average peer-review takes weeks and the clinical trial process months, but now the expectation is that science delivers its results like magic. For years now, questions have been raised on the effectiveness of the traditional, time-consuming peer-review process and this has launched a welcome culture of papers being uploaded as preprints for review. In the present instance of the HCQ imbroglio, it is the independent effort by external scientists that brought the blight to light. The key lesson is that it is a mistake to assume the scientific process as one divorced from the influence of power, privilege, finance and politics. The means and methods to a scientific result matter more than results — only achieved through global scrutiny. Openness, more than blame game, is what the post-COVID world needs now.
A right time to shift pharma gears
As a workable idea, a Health Impact Fund can become an alternative track for pharmaceutical innovators
We are living in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic — anxious about our families, our friends and ourselves, depressed by worldwide suffering and anxiety, upset by knowing that once more the poor and marginalised are worse affected. Could the rules and practices organising health care around the world have been better suited to this outbreak? Consider the Health Impact Fund as a plausible institutional reform of the current regime for developing and marketing new pharmaceuticals.
Medicines are among humanity’s greatest achievements. They have helped attain dramatic improvements in health and longevity as well as huge cost savings through reduced sick days and hospitalizations. The global market for pharmaceuticals is currently worth ₹110 crore lakh annually, 1.7% of the gross world product (IPFPA 2017, 5). Roughly 55% of this global pharmaceutical spending, ₹60 lakh crore, is for brand-name products, which are typically under patent.
R&D and concerns
While we should evidently continue funding pharmaceutical R&D, it is worth asking whether our current way of doing so is optimal. There are three main concerns. First, innovators motivated by the prospect of large markups tend to neglect diseases suffered mainly by poor people, who cannot afford expensive medicines. The 20 WHO-listed neglected tropical diseases together afflict over one billion people (WHO n.d.) but attract only 0.35% of the pharmaceutical industry’s R&D (IFPMA 2017, 15 and 21). Merely 0.12% of this R&D spending is devoted to tuberculosis and malaria, which kill 1.7 million people each year.
Second, thanks to a large number of affluent or well-insured patients, the profit-maximising price of a new medicine tends to be quite high. Consequently, most people around the world cannot afford advanced medicines that are still under patent. This is especially vexing because manufacturing costs are generally quite low. Every year, millions suffer and die from lack of access to medicines that can be mass-produced quite cheaply.
Also read | Price control on drugs is lazy thinking
Third, rewards for developing and then providing pharmaceutical products are poorly correlated with therapeutic value. Firms earn billions by developing duplicative drugs that add little to our pharmaceutical toolbox — and billions more by cleverly marketing their drugs for patients who won’t benefit. These large R&D investments would be much better spent on developing new life-saving treatments for deadly diseases plaguing the world’s poor.
To address these problems, we propose a complement to the present regime: the Health Impact Fund as an alternative track on which pharmaceutical innovators may choose to be rewarded. Any new medicine registered with the Health Impact Fund would have to be sold at or below the variable cost of manufacture and distribution, but would earn ten annual reward payments based on the health gains achieved with it.
On funding
The Health Impact Fund could start with as little as ₹20000 crore per annum and might then attract some 10-12 medicines, with one entering and one exiting in a typical year. Registered products would then earn some ₹17000-₹20000 crore, on average, during their first ten years. Of course, some would earn more than others – by having greater therapeutic value or by benefiting more people.
The Hindu Explains | How are drug prices regulated?
Long-term funding for the Health Impact Fund might come from willing governments — contributing in proportion to their gross national incomes — or from an international tax, perhaps on greenhouse gas emissions or speculative financial transactions. Non-contributing affluent countries would forgo the benefits: the pricing constraint on registered products would not apply to them. This gives innovators more reason to register (they can still sell their product at high prices in some affluent countries) and affluent countries reason to join.
The Health Impact Fund would get pharmaceutical firms interested in certain R&D projects that are unprofitable under the current regime – especially ones expected to produce large health gains among mostly poor people. Such projects would predominantly address communicable diseases, which continue to impose devastating disease burdens mainly upon the poor. With the Health Impact Fund in place, there would be much deeper and broader knowledge about such diseases, a richer arsenal of effective interventions and greater capacities for developing additional, more targeted responses quickly. Pharmaceutical innovators would thus have been much better prepared to supply or develop suitable medicines for containing the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Health Impact Fund would make an important difference also by rewarding for health outcomes rather than sales. For selling a medicine, it helps, of course, if this medicine is known to be effective. But it is quite possible to sell a relatively ineffective drug or to sell a drug to patients who will not benefit from it or would benefit more from another. With exorbitant markups, this sort of thing happens often: firms seek to influence hospitals, insurers, doctors and patients to use their patented drug and to favour it over others.
For achieving health gains with their product, innovators need different strategies. They need to think holistically about how their drug can work in the context of, or in synergy with, other factors relevant to treatment outcomes. They need to think about therapies and diagnostics together, in order to identify and reach the patients who can benefit most. They need to monitor results in real time to recognize and address possible impediments to uptake or therapeutic success. They need to ensure that high-value patients have affordable access to the drug and are properly instructed and motivated to make optimal use of it with the drug still in prime condition. In sum, a reward mechanism oriented towards health gains rather than high-markup sales would lead to a sustainable research-and-marketing system that is better prepared for fast and effective responses to outbreaks of unknown diseases, such as COVID-19.
Issue of state risk
Participation of commercial pharmaceutical firms is crucial for tackling global pandemics. They are best suited to develop and scale up provision of new vaccines and medications fast. At present such firms do, however, face discouraging business risks from governments who may — as some have done — use compulsory licences to divest them of their monopoly rewards. Health Impact Fund registration would remove this risk as states would have no reason to interfere with innovators whose profit lies in giving real and rapid at-cost access to their new product to all who may need it (Hollis and Busby 2020).
Nowhere is this focus on results, which the Health Impact Fund would encourage in innovators, more important than in the domain of communicable diseases. A firm rewarded for merely selling malaria drugs need not be distraught by the fact that malaria continues to infect over 20 crore people each year (WHO 2019, xii), killing 5 lakh of them. A firm rewarded for making its medicine reduce the malaria disease burden, by contrast, would aim to decimate the proliferation of malaria as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible. Collaborating with national health systems, international agencies and NGOs, such a firm would seek to build a strong public-health strategy around its product. Its highest goal would be complete eradication. If it succeeds in year seven, it can enjoy the world’s gratitude and collect three additional handsome reward payments for investment in its other research projects.
Applying this point to a new disease like COVID-19 is complicated by the fact that we lack here a well-established baseline representing the harm the disease would have done in the absence of the new medicine to be assessed. For malaria, such a baseline can be established on the basis of a stable disease trajectory observable over many years. In the case of a new epidemic, one must rely on a modelling exercise that estimates the baseline trajectory on the basis of obtainable data about the spread of the disease and its impact on infected patients. This surely is a challenging undertaking which cannot yield precise or uncontroversial results about what damage the epidemic would truly have done if the vaccine or medication in question had not appeared.
Still, despite the roughness of such a modelled baseline, the Health Impact Fund would give innovators the right incentives. It would guide them to ask not: how can we develop an effective product and then achieve high sales at high markups? But rather: how can we develop an effective product and then deploy it so as to help reduce the overall disease burden as effectively as possible? The COVID-19 pandemic should make us stop and think: which of these two questions should be guiding our pharmaceutical innovators?
Felicitas Holzer is a researcher in the Bioethics Center and Bioethics Network of the World Health Organization at the social science faculty of FLACSO in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Coordinator for governmental relations at Incentives for Global Health (IGH). Thomas Pogge is Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs and founding Director of the Global Justice Program at Yale. He is co-founder of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP), an international network aiming to enhance the impact of scholars, teachers and students on global poverty, and of Incentives for Global Health, a team effort toward developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide
We are living in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic anxious about our families, our friends and ourselves, depressed by worldwide suffering and anxiety, upset by knowing that once more the poor and marginalised are worse affected.
Medicines are among humanity’s greatest achievements. They have helped attain dramatic improvements in health and longevity as well as huge cost savings through reduced sick days and hospitalizations.
The global market for pharmaceuticals is currently worth Rs.110 crore lakh annually, 1.7% of the gross world product (IPFPA 2017).
Roughly 55% of this global pharmaceutical spending, Rs.60 lakh crore, is for brand-name products, which are typically under patent.
Rules and practices of health care around the world have been better suited to this outbreak?
- In India, the profit-maximising monopoly price of a new medicine is much lower, but similarly unaffordable for most citizens.
- In the United States, thousand-fold (100000%) mark-ups over production costs are not atypical.
- To be sure, before such huge mark-ups can yield any profits, commercial pharmaceutical innovators must first cover their large R&D costs, currently Rs.14 lakh crore a year, including the cost of clinical trials needed to demonstrate safety and efficacy, the cost of capital tied up during the long development process, and the cost of any research efforts that fail somewhere along the way.
- Consider the Health Impact Fund as a plausible institutional reform of the current regime for developing and marketing new pharmaceuticals.
- Commercial pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) efforts are encouraged and rewarded through the earnings that innovators derive from sales of their branded products.
- These earnings largely depend on the 20-year product patents they are entitled to obtain in WTO member states.
- Such patents give them a temporary monopoly, enabling them to sell their new products without competition at a price far above manufacture and distribution costs, while still maintaining a substantial sales volume.
Funding R&D and Concerns: There are three main concerns:
We should evidently continue funding pharmaceutical R&D, it is worth asking whether our current way of doing so is optimal.
First, innovators motivated by the prospect of large mark-ups tend to neglect diseases suffered mainly by poor people, who cannot afford expensive medicines.
- The 20 WHO-listed neglected tropical diseases together afflict over one billion people (WHO n.d.) but attract only 0.35% of the pharmaceutical industry’s R&
- Merely 0.12% of this R&D spending is devoted to tuberculosis and malaria, which kill 1.7 million people each year.
Second, thanks to a large number of affluent or well-insured patients, the profit-maximising price of a new medicine tends to be quite high.
- Consequently, most people around the world cannot afford advanced medicines that are still under patent.
- This is especially vexing because manufacturing costs are generally quite low.
- Every year, millions suffer and die from lack of access to medicines that can be mass-produced quite cheaply.
Third, rewards for developing and then providing pharmaceutical products are poorly correlated with therapeutic value.
- Firms earn billions by developing duplicative drugs that add little to our pharmaceutical toolbox and billions more by cleverly marketing their drugs for patients who won’t benefit.
- These large R&D investments would be much better spent on developing new life-saving treatments for deadly diseases plaguing the world’s poor.
To address these problems, proposal of a complement to the present regime:
The Health Impact Fund as an alternative track on which pharmaceutical innovators may choose to be rewarded.
Any new medicine registered with the Health Impact Fund would have to be sold at or below the variable cost of manufacture and distribution, but would earn ten annual reward payments based on the health gains achieved with it.
Health Impact Fund: On funding to Registered Products:
- The Health Impact Fund could start with as little as Rs.20000 crore per annum and might then attract some 10-12 medicines, with one entering and one exiting in a typical year.
- Registered products would then earn some Rs.17000-Rs.20000 crore, on average, during their first ten years.
- Of course, some would earn more than others by having greater therapeutic value or by benefiting more people.
- Long-term funding for the Health Impact Fund might come from willing governments contributing in proportion to their gross national incomes or from an international tax, perhaps on greenhouse gas emissions or speculative financial transactions.
- Non-contributing affluent countries would forgo the benefits: the pricing constraint on registered products would not apply to them.
- This gives innovators more reason to register (they can still sell their product at high prices in some affluent countries) and affluent countries reason to join.
- The Health Impact Fund would get pharmaceutical firms interested in certain R&D projects that are unprofitable under the current regime especially ones expected to produce large health gains among mostly poor people.
Benefits of Health Impact Fund:
- Such projects would predominantly address communicable diseases, which continue to impose devastating disease burdens mainly upon the poor.
- With the Health Impact Fund in place, there would be much deeper and broader knowledge about such diseases, a richer arsenal of effective interventions and greater capacities for developing additional, more targeted responses quickly.
- Pharmaceutical innovators would thus have been much better prepared to supply or develop suitable medicines for containing the COVID-19 outbreak.
- The Health Impact Fund would make an important difference also by rewarding for health outcomes rather than sales.
- For selling a medicine, it helps, of course, if this medicine is known to be effective. But it is quite possible to sell a relatively ineffective drug or to sell a drug to patients who will not benefit from it or would benefit more from another.
- With exorbitant mark-ups, this sort of thing happens often: firms seek to influence hospitals, insurers, doctors and patients to use their patented drug and to favour it over others.
For achieving health gains with their product, innovators need different strategies:
They need to think holistically about how their drug can work in the context of, or in synergy with, other factors relevant to treatment outcomes.
They need to think about therapies and diagnostics together, in order to identify and reach the patients who can benefit most.
They need to monitor results in real time to recognize and address possible impediments to uptake or therapeutic success.
They need to ensure that high-value patients have affordable access to the drug and are properly instructed and motivated to make optimal use of it with the drug still in prime condition.
In sum, a reward mechanism oriented towards health gains rather than high-mark-up sales would lead to a sustainable research-and-marketing system that is better prepared for fast and effective responses to outbreaks of unknown diseases, such as COVID-19.
Issue of government risk can be eliminated:
- Participation of commercial pharmaceutical firms is crucial for tackling global pandemics. They are best suited to develop and scale up provision of new vaccines and medications fast.
- At present such firms do, however, face discouraging business risks from governments who may as some have done use compulsory licences to divest them of their monopoly rewards.
- Health Impact Fund registration would remove this risk as states would have no reason to interfere with innovators whose profit lies in giving real and rapid at-cost access to their new product to all who may need it.
- Nowhere is this focus on results, which the Health Impact Fund would encourage in innovators, more important than in the domain of communicable diseases.
- Collaborating with national health systems, international agencies and NGOs, such a firm would seek to build a strong public-health strategy around its product. Its highest goal would be complete eradication.
- If it succeeds in year seven, it can enjoy the world’s gratitude and collect three additional handsome reward payments for investment in its other research projects.
_____________________________________________________________________
Ahead and vote for UNSC seat, India
launches campaign brochure
This will be the eighth time India will occupy a non-permanent UNSC seat, with its last stint in 2011-2012.
Sundarban is a mangroves area in the delta formed by the confluence, of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna river in the bay of Bengal.
Draf rules prohibited use of drone for delivery
launches campaign brochure
This will be the eighth time India will occupy a non-permanent UNSC seat, with its last stint in 2011-2012.
India will highlight international terrorism, United Nations reforms and Security Council expansion, streamlining the world body’s peacekeeping operations and technology initiatives during its upcoming tenure as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2021-22, said External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar here.
“The normal process of international governance has been under increasing strain as frictions have increased. Traditional and non-traditional security challenges continue to grow unchecked. Terrorism is the most egregious of such examples,” said Mr. Jaishankar, releasing a campaign brochure ahead of the vote. “Unreformed and under-representative” global institutions and the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact would increase challenges for the UNSC, he added.
“India’s overall objective during this tenure in the UN Security Council will be the achievement of N.O.R.M.S: a New Orientation for a Reformed Multilateral System,” he stated.
This will be the eighth time India will occupy a non-permanent UNSC seat, with its last stint in 2011-2012.
India is guaranteed a place in the UNSC as it is the sole candidate for Asia-Pacific, but needs two-thirds of the 193-member General Assembly to vote in its favour in a secret ballot scheduled for June 17 in New York. Mexico is also expected to be elected unopposed for the Latin American group but there will be a battle for 2 seats of the West European and Others Group (WEOG) between Canada, Ireland and Norway, and for the African seat between Kenya and Djibouti.
While India is expected to sail through with the 129 votes required for the seat, the government is setting its sights on much higher numbers than that ahead of the election. In 2010, when India stood for the UNSC seat of 2011-2012, it won 187 of the 190 votes polled.
Plan launched in 2013
The government launched its plan for the UNSC seat as far back as 2013, officials said, with a keen eye on 2021, the year that will mark its 75th year of Independence.
“We were asked to identify an uncontested spot, which was a problem as the first such slot would only come available in 2026,” Asoke Mukherji who was the U.N. Permanent Representative in 2013 told The Hindu. “To our good fortune, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan agreed, in a gesture to our friendship, to step aside for the 2021-22 seat. They cleared the decision in their Cabinet and then we wrote jointly to the General Assembly,” he added
The next big challenge was to pursue the Asia-Pacific grouping nomination without any last minute contenders being propped up against India. “While diplomacy between capitals certainly helps, the vote had to be tied down by negotiations on the ground,” said a diplomat, explaining how India was able to win a unanimous endorsement from the 55-nation grouping that included both China and Pakistan, in June 2019.
However, given rising tensions in relations with both those countries since then, as well as criticism from countries such as Turkey and Malaysia and other groupings like the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) over the government’s decision on Article 370 last August as well as the Citizenship Amendment Act, officials admit that the challenge to win the maximum votes at the General Assembly this time is going to be more uphill than in the past.
Security Council
Maintain peace and security amongst nation
Consists of 15members, 5 members from France, Russia, U.K ,U.S ten non permanent which are elected for 2 year term.
The non-parmanent members. Are chosen from regional groups which are as follows :
African Groups : 3 members
Asia specific Group : 2 members
Eastern European Group : (CEIT) or countries economic in transition ) :1 member
Latin American and Cannabean Group (GRULAC) : 2 members
Western European and Others Groups (WEOG) :2 members at least one of these must be from Western Europe
In addition one of the non permanent member of the council is an Arab country ,alternatively from African, Asia specific groups.
Each year the UN General Assembly elect five new members for a two year term. Re-election is allowed but term must not be consecutive.
Right to vote is a special voting power granted to permanent member at state at security Council.
Right to vote means that if one of the five permanent member cast a negative vote in the 15 member security Council, the resolution or decision would not be approved
Right to vote is available to the permanent member when UNSC makes recommendation for appointment of secretory General or for the entry of the new nation in UN.
Why does India seek permanent seat of UNSC with VETO POWER ?
India seek permanent seat of UNSC with VETO POWER of the following :
Representation of population
Faith in UN
Size of economy
Contributions to UN peace keeping mission
International Response to India's Demand
G4- is the group of four nation namely India,Japan , France and Germany. These nation support each others claim permanent membership of UNSC with VETO power.
Coffee club- It is group of coffee exporting nation ahed by Pakisthan and Italy. Coffee club is against the increase in Permanent member of UNSC but support the non permanent member of UNSC (Italy, Spain, Pakistan, Argentina, Turkey, Mexico, South Korea, Malta, Canada.
India will highlight international terrorism, United nation reforms and Security Council expansion, streamlining the world body's peacekeeping operation and technology initiatives during its upcoming tenure as a non-permanent member of the United Nation Security Council UNSC 2020-21.
" UNreformed and under representative " global institutions and the COVID-19 penndemic and it's impact would increase the challenges for UNSC.
" India's overall objectives during the tenure in the UN Security Council will be the achievements of N. O. R. M. S. A new orientation for a reform multilateral system," he stated.
This will be the eighth time India will occupy a non-permanent UNSC seat with its last stint in 2011-2012
To our good fortune the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan agreed in a gesture to our friendship to step a side for 2021-22 sea.
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Close to 28% of Sunderbans damaged in cyclone in Amphan
It span from the Googly river in the state of west Bengal to the Baleshwar River in the Bangladesh.
Sebastian mangroves forest covers an area of about 10,000 kma.sq (2,323 sq. mi) and west Bengal they extended over 4,260 km.sq.(1,640 sq mi ) across the south 24 paragnas and North 24 paragnas districts.
The most abundant tree species are sundri
Permission to use them for e-commerce or for delivering medical supplies may take a year
Food delivery by drones in India is quite sometime away despite the DGCA’s nod to aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy for trials. The Centre has notified draft rules prohibiting “carriage of payload” as well as “dropping of articles” by unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Ministry of Civil Aviation notified the draft rules, known as Unmanned Aircraft System Rules, 2020, on June 2 for importing, manufacturing and owning drones as well as for drone ports, or airports for drones. It has invited comments from stakeholders within 30 days, following which the rules will be finalised.
Registration
The draft rules by the Centre come 18 months after it mandated that drone owners will have to get their equipment registered with the DGCA and allowed their use within the visual range.
Rule number 36 and 38 in the Ministry’s draft state that no unmanned aircraft shall carry any payload, unless specified by the Director General of DGCA. Neither shall a person “drop or project or cause or permit to be dropped or projected from a UAS (unmanned aircraft system) in motion anything,” except when specified.
Permission for trials
The rules come at a time the DGCA has permitted food startups like Zomato and Swiggy to conduct trials for drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS). As many as 13 consortia, including SpiceJet, have received permissions from the aviation safety watchdog to conduct trials. A DGCA official explained that trials for these 13 companies could take up to six months to conclude. Each of these companies will then submit a report to the DGCA, which will then examine the feasibility of remote operations of drones.
An official of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, too, said that a separate set of rules which will enable use of drones for e-commerce or delivering medical supplies may take at least a year. This time-frame may be too optimistic, as regulatory clearances are slow and tardy.
Rule number 36 & 38 in the Ministry's drag state that no unnamed aircraft shall carry any play load unless specified by the Director General of DGCA, Neither shall a person dropped a projected from a UAS (unnamed aircraft system in motion anything, " except when specified.
India China, holds talks agree to hold stalk Galwan areas
So far both sides have held five rounds of Major General level talks
In continuation of the ground level dialogue to resolve the ongoing stand-off on the border, India and China on Monday held talks at the Brigade Commander and Commanding Officer (CO) level in the Galwan area of Eastern Ladakh, defence sources said.
The talks were focused on de-escalation at Patrolling Points (PP) 14 and 17A, the sources asserted
Ground-level military talks were on regularly to resolve the stand-offs and it was an incremental process, the sources stated on the stand-off that has entered the seventh week.
So far both sides have held five rounds of Major General level talks, of which two happened last week after the Corps Commander level talks on June 6. There have also been a series of talks at the Brigadier and Colonel levels. Meanwhile, the limited “disengagement” agreed by both sides was under way, the sources said.
However, there is no change in the massive build-up in depth areas on the Chinese side, the sources noted. In addition to moving into Indian held territory in some places, China had undertaken build-up of troops and deployed fighter bombers, rocket forces, air defence radars and jammers among others on their side. India would continue to maintain its build-up until China withdrew the build-up, the sources reiterated.
Army chief statement
Last Saturday, in the first acknowledgement of the stand-offs, Army Chief Gen. Naravane stated that troops of both sides were “disengaging” in a phased manner from the stand-off areas following the series of ground talks and a lot of disengagement had happened in the Galwan river area. At the Corps Commander talks, India had firmly conveyed its demand of restoring the status quo ante to pre-May 5 positions.
Beginning early May, the two sides were engaged in stand-offs at several locations at Ladakh, and at the Corps Commanders talks on June 6, both sides mutually agreed on five locations of conflict - Patrolling Point (PP) 14, 15, 17A, North bank of Pangong Tso and Chushul, and also on partial disengagement from some of these places.
Army sources said that at the Galwan area, limited “disengagement” had began earlier and such limited de-escalation at PP 15, 17A and Gogra areas was agreed at the Corps Commander level.
All areas, except the Finger 4 area of Pangong Tso, were seeing some disengagement and could be resolved at the local level, the sources observed. Pangong Tso remains a major area of concern where Chinese troops have moved up to Finger 4 area and dug in on Indian territory. The next round of Corps Commander level
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