When top judges say democracy is at stake, media focus on Sunny Leone

Bengaluru, Mar 11: Heated verbal exchange between Minister K Sudhakar and former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar in the assembly over disqualification of 17 MLAs last year, continued to disrupt the proceedings on Wednesday, with both opposition and treasury benches pushing for a privilege motion and demanding action.

Chaotic scenes and adjournments marked the House proceedings, with both sides not ready to budge.

As the House met for the day, around 11 am, senior Minister K S Eshwarappa accusing Congress MLA Ramesh Kumar of using "expletive" during a debate last evening, demanded his apology and that he be kept out of the proceedings.

Sudhakar, against whom expletive was allegedly used by Kumar, said, the words used were unpardonable and he should be heard, as he has given notice.

Leader of Opposition Siddaramaiah then demanded that he be allowed to speak first as he had given notice on Tuesday itself.

The Congress leader on his part has accused Sudhakar of breaching Kumar's privilege by allegedly making derogatory remarks against him.

Intervening, Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri said he has received breach of privilege notice from both sides and would allow it only after the question hour as per rules.

Though Congress expressed its agreement with the Speaker about letting them raise the matter after question hour, BJP legislators including Ministers said, Ramesh Kumar should be suspended.

Pointing out that Kumar was not inside the House, some ruling party MLAs even called him "escapist" and demanded action against him.

Strongly objecting to it, Siddaramaiah questioned the ruling party's intentions in running the house smoothly.

As this was followed by heated arguments between both sides, the Speaker adjourned the House for 15 minutes.

When the house met after much delay at 12:55 pm, the chaos continued.

As the Speaker allowed Minister Jagadish Shettar to speak, who was requesting permission to raise a point, Siddaramaiah objected to it and said he had given notice first.

He said, "this is not correct, it looks like government doesn't want the House to function, they don't want discussion on the budget, they are purposely blocking the proceedings of the House".

However, some BJP MLAs reacted to this by shouting slogans "shame shame Ramesh Kumar".

As his repeated attempts to conduct the proceedings failed, the Speaker adjourned the House for lunch.

Sudhakar, while speaking during a special discussion on the Constitution on Tuesday evening had made critical remarks against the decision of Kumar, as speaker, to disqualify 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs under the anti-defection law, including him.

Angered by this Kumar, who opposed discussion on the subject, amid heated argument between BJP and Congress members allegedly uttered the expletive, which aggravated the situation and had resulted in pandemonium in the House last evening.

Davos, Jan 20: India's richest 1 per cent hold more than four-times the wealth held by 953 million people who make up for the bottom 70 per cent of the country's population, while the total wealth of all Indian billionaires is more than the full-year budget, a new study said on Monday.

Releasing the study 'Time to Care' here ahead of the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), rights group Oxfam also said the world's 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60 per cent of the planet's population.

The report flagged that global inequality is shockingly entrenched and vast and the number of billionaires has doubled in the last decade, despite their combined wealth having declined in the last year.

"The gap between rich and poor can't be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these," said Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar, who is here to represent the Oxfam confederation this year.

The issues of income and gender inequality are expected to figure prominently in discussions at the five-day summit of the WEF, starting Monday. The WEF's annual global risks Report has also warned that the downward pressure on the global economy from macroeconomic fragilities and financial inequality continued to intensify in 2019.

Concern about inequality underlies recent social unrest in almost every continent, although it may be sparked by different tipping points such as corruption, constitutional breaches, or the rise in prices for basic goods and services, as per the WEF report.

Although global inequality has declined over the past three decades, domestic income inequality has risen in many countries, particularly in advanced economies and reached historic highs in some, the Global Risks Report flagged last week.

The Oxfam report further said "sexist" economies are fuelling the inequality crisis by enabling a wealthy elite to accumulate vast fortunes at the expense of ordinary people and particularly poor women and girls.

Regarding India, Oxfam said the combined total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19 which was at Rs 24,42,200 crore.

"Our broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women. No wonder people are starting to question whether billionaires should even exist," Behar said.

As per the report, it would take a female domestic worker 22,277 years to earn what a top CEO of a technology company makes in one year.

With earnings pegged at Rs 106 per second, a tech CEO would make more in 10 minutes than what a domestic worker would make in one year.

It further said women and girls put in 3.26 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day -- a contribution to the Indian economy of at least Rs 19 lakh crore a year, which is 20 times the entire education budget of India in 2019 (Rs 93,000 crore).

Besides, direct public investments in the care economy of 2 per cent of GDP would potentially create 11 million new jobs and make up for the 11 million jobs lost in 2018, the report said.

Behar said the gap between rich and poor cannot be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these.

He said women and girls are among those who benefit the least from today's economic system.

"They spend billions of hours cooking, cleaning and caring for children and the elderly. Unpaid care work is the 'hidden engine' that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses and societies moving.

"It is driven by women who often have little time to get an education, earn a decent living or have a say in how our societies are run, and who are therefore trapped at the bottom of the economy,” Behar added.

Oxfam said governments are massively under-taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations and failing to collect revenues that could help lift the responsibility of care from women and tackle poverty and inequality.

Besides, the governments are also underfunding vital public services and infrastructure that could help reduce women and girls' workload, the report said.

As per the global survey, the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth than all the women in Africa.

Besides, women and girls put in 12.5 billion hours of unpaid care work each and every day -- a contribution to the global economy of at least USD 10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech industry.

Getting the richest one per cent to pay just 0.5 per cent extra tax on their wealth over the next 10 years would equal the investment needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education and health.

Governments must prioritise care as being as important as all other sectors in order to build more human economies that work for everyone, not just a fortunate few, Behar said.

Oxfam said its calculations are based on the latest data sources available, including from the Credit Suisse Research Institute's Global Wealth Databook 2019 and Forbes' 2019 billionaires list.

Bengaluru, May 30: People travelling to Bengaluru by flight or train must pay to get their Covid-19 tests done at designated private labs.

This is being done to improve the participation of private labs that have been approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research to do testing. Many of these labs are running at sub-optimal levels.

The new rule will also help the special categories of passengers and their attendants to leave early for home quarantine after giving the sample once the swab collection centres are established at airports and railway stations. The nodal officers at these places will coordinate in establishing the swab collection centres.

Each test will cost Rs 650 per sample. XCyton Diagnostics will cater to air passengers. Rail passengers will be tested at Neuberg Anand Reference Laboratory, Cancyte Technologies Pvt Ltd, Aster Labs, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Vydehi Hospital and Syngene International Ltd.