Over 20 000 protesting farmers have reached India s financial capital. The farmers plan to gherao Maharashtra State Assembly and press for their demands. The state government has decided to appoint a six members committee to look into the farmers demands which includes a complete waiver of loans and power dues and implementation of the Ms Swaminathan Committee report. Track live updates here: CM Devendra Fadnavis says positive about farmers demand We're positive in fulfilling demands. Since the 1st day of the Morcha we tried to discuss various issues with them. https://t.co/WstKgK5YXT— ANI (@ANI) 1520842895000 Rahul Gandhi asks PM Modi CM Fadnavis to accept farmers demand The mammoth #FarmersMarchToMumbai is a stunning example of people s power. The Congress party stands with the Farme https://t.co/bAylftUvEf— Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) 1520840414000 Farmers delegation reach assembly to meet CM Farmers delegation reached #Maharashtra Assembly for the meeting with the State Govt formed committee to discuss th https://t.co/nmIFQ8hQwo— ANI (@ANI) 1520839704000 Maharashtra Minister assures to solve major issues There'll be a meeting with farmers at 1pm. I think we'll give solutions for 80-90% of their issues. We're serious a https://t.co/DwyxXDdQJn— ANI (@ANI) 1520839218000 Why are upset Maharashtra farmers marching to Mumbai? Here is the economics & politics of the row Sitaram Yechury is scheduled to address the farmers at Azad Maidan at 2 pm. Congress President Rahul Gandhi says farmers across India facing various issues This is not an issue of Maharashtra farmers alone but of farmers all over India: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on https://t.co/wTdFGJKyVM— ANI (@ANI) 1520832662000 High security around Assembly: Number of security personnel guarding Maharashtra State Assembly have been increased in view of farmers agitation to avoid any untoward incident Hasn t Maharashtra announced a loan waiver last year? Yes. Last year the Maharashtra government had announced a loan waiver of Rs 4 000 crore under the first phase of the farm loan waiver scheme. No traffic divers ion yet Amitesh Kumar Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) on Monday said that no road would be closed due to the protest march by the All India Kisan Sabha s farmers. Kumar said No road closure or diversions will happen due to Farmers Morcha now . Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray has came out in support of the farmers who have reached here after undertaking a Long March to Mumbai from Nashik to press their various demands including full loan waiver. Azad Maidan in south Mumbai has turned into a sea of red this morning as thousands of farmers carrying red flags converged here after walking around 180 kms under blazing sun over the last six days. Latest visuals from Azad Maidan: #Maharashtra: Latest visuals of All India Kisan Sabha protest which has reached Mumbai's Azad Maidan. The protest w https://t.co/cwwemPKBZx— ANI (@ANI) 1520820981000 #WATCH: Visuals from Mumbai's Azad Maidan where members of All India Kisan Sabha have gathered to protest. https://t.co/peSzEucl3P— ANI (@ANI) 1520824233000 Maharashtra government to form six-member committee to look into farmers demands In the light of the ongoing farmers protest in Maharashtra the state government has decided to appoint a six members committee to look into the farmers demands. Farmers reach Mumbai plan to gherao Assembly today One of the biggest morchas to have been undertaken by farmers has entered Mumbai on Sunday. A morcha of 20 000 to 25 000 farmers plan to gherao Maharashtra Assembly and press for their demands. (With Agency inputs)
NEW DELHI: India strengthened their chances to qualify for the final of the Nidahas Trophy 2018 after recording a comprehensive six-wicket win against Sri Lanka at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo on Monday. FULL SCORECARD India chased down 153 in 17.3 overs with nine deliveries to spare as the middle-order pair of Manish Pandey (42 ) and Dinesh Karthik (39 ) stitched an unbeaten 68-run stand for the fifth wicket. 4TH T20I: AS IT HAPPENED The contest was reduced to 19-overs-a-side after a lengthy rain delay. India lost openers Rohit Sharma (11) and Shikhar Dhawan (8) cheaply before Suresh Raina s dazzling cameo as he smacked two fours and as many sixes in his 15-ball 27 to offset the advantage Akila Dananjaya had given his team with the scalps of openers. KL Rahul (18) who replaced Rishabh Pant in the playing XI was looking good during his stay but was dismissed in an unlucky manner becoming the first Indian batsman and tenth overall to be out hit-wicket. When Rahul departed Sri Lanka had faint hopes with India 85/4 in 9.5 overs but a calm-headed display from Pandey and Karthik ensured India sailed in the chase. That India were left to chase a rather easy target was thanks to a late flurry of wickets with Shardul Thakur recording a career-best figures of 4/27. Sri Lanka looked set for a big total after they hammered 24 runs in the first two overs but kept losing wickets in a heap. The young attack led by Shardul and Washington Sundar (2/21) binding the hosts in the second half of the innings after they were sent in to bat. A pair of sixes kick-started the Sri Lankan innings but India hit back with two quick blows. Then in-form Kusal Mendis (55) who scored his fourth T20I fifty extended Sri Lanka s bright start after they lost Danushka Gunathilaka (17) and Kusal Perera (3) in the space of seven deliveries. With Upul Tharanga Mendis took Yuzvendra Chahal to the cleaners as the duo clobbered 17 from the leggie s second over. After 10 overs they were 94/2 with Kusal Mendis in red-hot touch. Vijay Shankar broke the stand with the wicket of Tharanga (22) but by that time the pair had added 62 runs. Stand-in captain Thisara Perera began with back to back sixes off his first two deliveries but Shardul exploited the knuckle delivery to the fullest during his spell to put an early break on his onslaught at 15 (6b). Chahal had some respite when he dismissed the dangerous Kusal Mendis in his final over of the night finishing well to end with figures of 1/34 after leaking 27 in his first two overs. Even though the hosts continued to find a boundary every now and then Indians kept chipping away. Shardul dismissed Dasun Shanaka (19) and Dushmantha Chameera (0) off consecutive deliveries in the last over but Suranga Lakmal survived the hat-trick ball. India after their second win in three matches climbed up to the top spot in the standings with four points. Brief Scores: India 153/4 (Manish Pandey 42 Dinesh Karthik 39 ; Akila Dananjaya 2/19) beat Sri Lanka (Kusal Mendis 55; Shardul Thakur 4/27)
00:07 (IST) That s it from us at Firstpost in our coverage of the fourth match of the ongoing Nidahas Trophy 2018 with India overpowering Sri Lanka to post a six-wicket win and move to the top of the points table in the process. We certainly hope we were able to keep you updated with the events of the game and that you will join us on Wednesday when India take on Bangladesh in a bid to seal their spot in the final. For now it s time for us to take your leave. Good night! Full Scorecard
15:42 (IST) That s all that we have for the moment in terms of live coverage of events. It was a power-packed performance from the Australians to go 1-0 up in the ODI series. India will have to bring their A-game to the ground when the two teams meet again on Thursday. But don t go anywhere. The Indian men s team is in action today too. Stay tuned to Firstpost for our live coverage of India vs Sri Lanka in the Nidahas Trophy.
India is underperforming the other Emerging Markets as we are underrepresented in tech and commodities which are pushing growth now explains SShankar Sharma of First Global talking to ET Now.Edited excerpts: It all started with this tug of war between bonds and equities which led to the sharp adjustment in global financial assets. Do you think the adjustment is behind us that we have the lows in place for 2018? We can get very intellectual about it saying that there was an issue with bonds and the relative levels of bonds versus stocks. Very simply my view is that markets have been running a lot. There had been no meaningful correction and it had to happen at some point. When it happens usually out of a million reasons you can always point to some reason -- trade war or bond yields or volatility went up suddenly. In my view it was frankly long overdue. But it is done and dusted with and it is behind us. Do you think we have the lows in place for financial markets in 2018? Definitely for the US market definitely for the emerging markets. If you look at the global equity markets US has been doing very well as has been Japan. On a relative basis emerging markets have been flat lining versus global equities. That trend is going to change for the better. Emerging markets are going to hit a purple patch. Largely on the back of very strong commodity prices if you go back eight years from let us say 2010 the relative emerging market bear market started and it still working its way down. That has more-or-less played itself out and you are going to see a big resurgence in emerging market numbers. But they are still very closely related to oil prices or steel prices or aluminium prices. There is a big virtuous cycle ahead of us for EMs that may or may not be so good for India. But leaving that aside for a minute EMs are going to have a very good time incrementally from here on. You are also going to see overall weakness in the dollar which will be an additional boost for assets moving away incrementally from dollar denominated assets to non-dollar assets. EMs are always the place where money can go. Overall I am very optimistic for 2018 without any doubt. Let us classify EMs into two categories -- emerging markets which are commodity importers and emerging markets which are commodity producers. Are you bullish on both the categories? That is a good question let me finesse this a bit more. EMs are broadly two large categories -- basically commodity producers and tech. So you have the South Koreas of the world the Taiwans of the world some part of China also because that has an increasing weightage of tech now. Of course you have financials in which India is dominating as also China. Overall my view is commodity centric markets will be rocking and that has been the view right from February 2016. We have had a conservation when markets were making lows and oil was I think hitting 27-28. My view was that was the bottom of the commodity cycle. Since then commodities have been terrific. Look at Brazil markets are up 80%. In dollar terms Russia will do very well. So commodities will do well tech is doing well India unfortunately has no presence in either. That is why we are seeing India underperforming. If you are seeing India at least the Nifty part of it leave out small caps out because I consider small caps to be of a different category altogether. I do not consider them really intrinsically part of India because this collection of small companies are doing very different kinds of things. Therefore just look at large caps. Large-caps are struggling in India because the two big drivers of large-cap performances across the world have been commodities and tech and we are totally under-represented on both. We have a bit of steel and we have virtually no tech because I do not consider Indian IT companies as tech companies at all. That s why you are seeing India lag. Of course there are domestic issues. Amongst all emerging markets India is the only one with tepid growth. It is 5% by old series and I consider the old series to be representative. The new series does not make any sense to me unless they rebase it going back several years. If you see Brazilian or Russian growth rate they have all been revised upwards while India has seen growth revisions which are downward. The relative delta that India was supposed to have been doing a lot better than it is doing while other countries which were not supposed to have been doing so well have been doing better. That relative differential gap between expectations has driven more money towards other EMs and quite rightly so. So while yes markets will do well India is in a little bit of a pickle on the large-caps the Sensex and Nifty aspect of it because it is underrepresented in tech and commodities. I remember that call on Tata Steel and steel in particular in 2018 when you specifically said that the best time to buy commodities is when there is bankruptcy and when there is blood on the Street. That was the time when some of the global commodity companies were going bankrupt. Now it looks like the excitement has just about started in the oil market. Chris Wood also seems to be acknowledging the fact that the bearish argument for oil are significantly diluted. It is a bull market in oil forget a bear market. The bear market got over a couple of years back. Anybody who still thinks oil is in a bear market will need to revisit those assumptions quite soon. My view is oil is going to be rocking. It is probably the best commodity trade out there and anything linked with oil will be automatically among the best equity trades out there. My view is you are looking at a 20 30 40 50 per cent kind of rise in oil over the next few months or years. I am very certain of that happening and that rightly or wrongly the Indian macros benefitted because of falling oil. There is nothing there to change India s macro except oil and that drove down all parameters which you are negative which were basically rates and inflation and the deficits on the twin side. Those will climb up. Bond yields are already looking very bullish. FD rates have gone up and relatively speaking you are looking at inflation creeping up. The entire virtuous cycle that we saw because of low oil will get reversed rightly or wrongly. I am not making any judgement call here. We took the good so we will have to take the bad. There is no case in India for a rate cut either case for a rate hike. I doubted the RBI will be brave enough for a hike but I do not think you are going to see anything which is going to provide a big tailwind to growth by way of interest rates. In India unfortunately we have a little bit of problem as far as macros are concerned. When you say that you expect India to underperform are you making a case that this year could be a negative year for Indian equities? No. When I say underperform I am underlining one aspect which is that I think we are still in a big global bull market. I do not see that ending any time soon. EMs will be in a terrific bull market and one interesting piece of data is that our emerging market index and I am sure that is true for the MSCI as well in dollar terms has still not taken out 2007 highs. Despite everything the fact is that we are still in a big bear market rally. A bull market will start when it takes out the 2007 highs and usually when that happens you are going to look at a 40-50% upside over the next couple of years. So the bull market is intact globally. In that context India will still be in a bull market but it may not do as well as other markets. If you have a 10-12% up year this year for global equities India might be up 8%. I am just speaking a number here. I am not making the call that we will be up only 8%. I am just giving an example that we will lag. At least the Sensex and Nifty part of the market will lag. But on the other hand I have been bullish on small caps for three-four years. If you look at the return differential between these two Nifty or the Sensex have given 12% or 12.5% since 2014. Small caps have given 45% compounded. That kind of return divergence has never happened in the history of India and I continue to believe that divergence will persist. So it is not a bear market. It is just that relatively India will probably lag EMs and will lag global equities.
New Delhi: India and the European Union will discuss next month resumption of the much-delayed Bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) that hasn t progressed much over the past five years. Chief negotiators of the two sides will meet in April to explore the possibility and work out some roadmap for the negotiations. EU negotiators are coming in April to discuss how to take the talks forward said a person aware of the development. The BTIA talks hit a roadblock on the contentious issues of import duty on European cars and alcohol (wines and spirits) levied by India and recognition of India as a data-secure nation by the EU. India also wants a greater access for its professionals in the EU. Prior to the meeting the government plans to consult the industry on products of its aggressive interest or exports in which it wants tariff concession from the European Union. Stakeholders will also deliberate on the products they don t want opened up. While Germany is keen on automobiles France wants lower import tariffs on wines. A lot of time has lapsed since the last set of talks happened. We will have to see which all new issues have cropped up in the meanwhile especially on free movement of labour and data security front said an industry representative who will take part in the stakeholder meeting this week. India and the EU had started the BTIA talks in 2007 and 16 rounds of negotiations have taken place till now. Negotiations were stalled amid the prolonged downturn in Europe and its focus on concluding the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement with the US. India then deferred talks after the EU had banned 700 generic drugs that were tested at Hyderabad-based GVK Biosciences. Brexit and the eventual apprehension of the EU to sign a BTIA separate from the Bilateral Investment Treaty with India further extended the delay. India s exports to the EU in the April-December period were 38 billion compared with 47.3 billion in 2016-17. In the same period India s imports from the EU were 35.2 billion and 42.3 billion respectively.
NEW DELHI: Persisting failure to build a robust defence production industry has ensured that India continues to remain in the strategically-vulnerable position of being the world s largest arms importer accounting for 12% of the global imports from 2013-2017. Arms imports by India increased by 24% between 2008-2012 and 2013-2017 periods as per data on international arms transfers released by global think-tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute on Monday. India is followed by Saudi Arabia Egypt UAE China Australia Algeria Iraq Pakistan and Indonesia as the world s top arms importers. The largest arms suppliers to India from 2013-2017 were Russia (62%) US (15%) and Israel (11%). India remains the biggest buyer of weaponry from Russia and Israel. The US as part of its foreign policy to counter China s growing influence in Asia has notched up military sales to India worth 15 billion over the last decade and up by 557% between 2008-2012 and 2013-2017 to overtake several countries and displace Russia at the top spot for a couple of years. SIPRI on its part said Arms transfers are often used as a US foreign policy tool to forge new strategic partnerships. As part of its efforts to offset China s growing influence in Asia and Oceania for example the US has strengthened its ties with India Its arms deliveries to India rose by 557% between 2008-2012 and 2013-2017. China with its systematic drive to build a strong defence-industrial base (DIB) figures among the world s top-five arms exporters after the US Russia France and Germany. They together account for 74% of all arms exports. China s http://kkd4int.webnode.com/ biggest client are Pakistan which receives 35% of its exports and Bangladesh (19%). India however continues to wallow with a fledgling DIB with the armed forces sourcing 65% of their requirements from abroad. Successive governments have failed to drastically overhaul the DRDO and its 50 labs five defence PSUs four shipyards and 41 ordnance factories to ensure they deliver without huge cost and time overruns. Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaking at a function on Monday herself admitted that though defence PSUs and ordnance factories have a lot of potential they need to be revived revitalised and made a lot more dynamic . India has also made little headway in getting its private sector to take to defence production in a big way. The NDA government s much-touted Make in India policy with foreign collaboration has also come a cropper with no major defence production project actually taking off in the last four years. As was first reported by TOI last October at least six major mega projects worth Rs 3.5 lakh crore from fighters and submarines to helicopters and infantry combat vehicles are stuck at different stages. Similarly India has attracted just a measly Rs 1.17 crore as foreign direct investment in the defence production sector in the last four years.
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