Farmers blame Siddaramaiah govt for diluting price norms

TNN
November 20, 2018

Bengaluru, Nov 20: Protesting farmers, who are demanding Rs 200 more per tonne of sugarcane over and above the fair and remunerative price(FRP) announced by the Centre in July, blame the previous Siddaramaiah government for their problems.

The Siddaramaiah government, bowed to pressure from the sugar lobby to forego its power to fix the sugarcane state advisory price (SAP), compromising the interest of cane growers, they say.

Politicians own around 40% of the major sugar mills in the state and dominate the sugar lobby in Karnataka. The Karnataka Sugarcane (Purchase and Supply Control) Act, 2013, enacted by the BJP government headed by Jagadish Shettar after a decadelong struggle by farmers, vested with the state government the power to fix the sugarcane price each year. It also gives the government the power to seize or take over mills that fail to pay the SAP.

The government calculated the SAP by taking into account the revenue of sugar mills, including from byproducts like bagasse and molasses. The farmers were happy because the SAP was usually higher than the fair and remunerative price (FRP) fixed every year by the central Commission for Agricultural Price and Costs. The Siddaramaiah government implemented the act by fixing SAP for two years despite a stiff opposition from sugar mill owners. Some mill owners refused to pay the SAP but gave in after a favourable court order for the farmers and the government. This led mill owners to get the government to amend the act.

“Since the SAP has legal backing, the mills decided do away with the provision completely,” said Subhash Shirabur, a former member of Karnataka Sugarcane Control Board and a cane grower from Bagalkot. “Unfortunately, the government readily agreed. Now we have to beg the mills for the right price.”

In place of SAP, the government brought in a revenue-sharing formula in which the farmers and the mill owners divide profits at a ratio of 70:30.

“As per the amendment, the sugar mills have to pay the FRP within 15 days of cane supply and wait till the end of the season to share the profit,” said Muttappa Komar, Bagalkot zilla panchayat vice-president. “But in the four years since the amendment came into force, the farmers have not received any money apart from the FRP.” Former CM Jagadish Shettar says issues like pending dues and irregular payment have cropped up again because the government has no control over the mills. “Re-enacting the SAP law is the only solution to this problem,” he said. “The government should seriously consider this.”

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Agencies
January 12,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 12: A recent study has claimed that people end up wasting almost an entire day when they take a vacation.

This can happen while standing in a queue or searching for places to visit, people do not keep a count of the time they have actually utilised during the trip. As a result, they end up doing much lesser activities than they originally had planned.

According to a recent report in Fox News, the study has also shared the fact that people try to justify time waste with planning and scheduling activities whereas the truth is that these things can be done well ahead to save time during the trip.

The average time waste according to the study commissioned by Sykes Holiday Cottages also said the people taking a seven days' trip waste a minimum of 17-and-a-half hours to figure out various factors.

But there are other causes involved as well. When one visits any crowded location, the real-time spent to enjoy the location is lesser than the time spent on reaching and trying to get involved. For instance, if one visits an amusement park, the activities take lesser time than the preparatory and other phases.

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Agencies
June 24,2020

New Delhi, Jun 24: The Centre has made it mandatory for sellers to enter the 'Country of Origin' while registering all new products on government e-marketplace (GeM).

The e-marketplace is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry which facilitates the entry of small local sellers in public procurement, while implementing 'Make in India' and MSE Purchase Preference Policies of the Centre.

Accordingly, the ministry said the move has been made to promote 'Make in India' and 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat'.

The provision has been enabled via the introduction of new features on GeM.

Besides the registration process, the new feature also reminds sellers who have already uploaded their products, to disclose their products' 'Country of Origin' details.

The ministry further said that failing to disclose the detail will lead to removal of the products from the e-marketplace.

"GeM has taken this significant step to promote 'Make in India' and 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat'," the ministry said in a statement.

"GeM has also enabled a provision for indication of the percentage of local content in products. With this new feature, now, the 'Country of Origin' as well as the local content percentage are visible in the marketplace for all items. More importantly, the 'Make in India' filter has now been enabled on the portal. Buyers can choose to buy only those products that meet the minimum 50 per cent local content criteria."

In case of bids, the ministry said that buyers can now reserve any bid for a "Class I Local suppliers. For those bids below Rs 200 crore, only Class I and Class II Local Suppliers are eligible to bid, with Class I supplier getting purchase preference".

In addition to this, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has reportedly called for a meeting with all e-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart to display the country of origin on the products sold on their platform, as well as the extent of value added in India.

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Agencies
January 19,2020

New Delhi, Jan 19: Messaging service WhatsApp which on Sunday faced issues in transmitting multimedia content including pictures and images, prompting social media users to share hilarious memes and messages, resumed regular services after over two hours.

#WhatsAppDown was the trending hashtag on Twitter for most part of Sunday afternoon in India along with several other countries such as Brazil, Europe and also parts of Middle-East including UAE, reported downdetector.in, a realtime problem and outage monitoring website.

Users of the popular messaging app were unable to send media files, stickers and GIFs.

Most users immediately went to Twitter to find out about the problem and check if others were facing the same issue.

Numerous tweets and memes took over the internet as soon as the news broke about the WhatsApp tech issue. After around two hours of technical glitch, the app resumed full service.

Even after full recovery of media transfer, people globally still continued checking the status of the messaging app.

WhatsApp has been one of the prime messaging apps since May 2009 and has recently collaborated with Facebook.

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