Covid-19: Pune district now worst-hit in India

Pune district has become the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic with maximum reported cases in India. With 1.82 lakh confirmed cases, it has surpassed the top five affected districts across India, including Mumbai (1.48 lakh), Chennai (1.37 lakh), Thane (1.35 lakh) and Bengaluru urban (1.35 lakh) by a good margin. Pune district had also crossed Delhi, which had 1.79 lakh cases.

Maharashtra’s first two confirmed cases were reported from Pune on March 9, with the return of a travel group of 40 from Dubai. However, Mumbai soon surpassed Pune and added cases in big volumes in May, June and July.

Pune saw a major surge in July and had the highest number of active cases in the country. Between July 14 and 27, it added the highest number of new cases in the country. Of the total 5,74,858 cases added in these two weeks, 37,950 were from Pune. Data shows while Pune city is the biggest contributor in the district, rural areas and even Pimpri-Chinchwad have been adding cases in bulk.

As on Wednesday, Pune city had 1.04 lakh cases and 2,607 deaths, while Pune rural had 27,863 cases and 745 deaths. The adjoining Pimpri-Chinchwad too 49,794 cases and 808 deaths. “Pune has the highest active cases in the country because we are conducting the maximum tests, 11,000 a day,” said Vikram Kumar, commissioner, Pune Municipal Corporation. Pune divisional commissioner Saurabh Rao had earlier said that the district had been conducting the maximum number of tests in the country. On Tuesday, the tests per million in Pune were 74,254 as against the state’s 31,757 and India’s 31,116.

The Indian Medical Association’s Hospital Board of India, Pune chapter, said that in addition to increased testing, the influx of patients from adjoining districts to hospitals in Pune was adding to the number. “Patients from Satara, Sangli, Solapur, Kolhapur and even Dhule are opting to get themselves admitted to hospitals in Pune owing to our evolved treatment strategies and well-equipped facilities,” they said. Pune is now building jumbo facilities on the lines of Mumbai to handle patient load. BMC’s additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said they were providing technical knowhow to Pune for construction of jumbo centres.

August 2020: IHS Markit India Manufacturing PMI

Activity in the country’s manufacturing sector rebounded in August after four months of contraction, led by an increase in new orders. The data provided some relief from the grim economic numbers in recent months that showed the economy contracting by a record 23.9% in the June quarter.

The survey showed that output and new orders expanded at the fastest pace since February. But job cuts continued into August, extending the current sequence of decline to five months.

The IHS Markit India Manufacturing PMI rose to 52 in August from 46 in July, signalling some improvement across the manufacturing sector. The 50-point mark separates expansion from contraction. The strict national lockdown imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus has hurt the overall economy and led to job losses, heaping misery on businesses and workers. The survey is compiled from responses to questionnaires sent to purchasing managers in a panel of around 400 manufacturers and serves as an advance indicator of manufacturing conditions.

Data released on Monday showed the country’s GDP contracted 23.9% in the April-June quarter — the period when the lockdown was in place — with the manufacturing sector declining 39.3%. The key sector has been in the midst of a sharp slowdown and has been contracting for four consecutive quarters. Separate data showed the eight core sectors contracting for the fifth consecutive month in July although the pace of contraction narrowed.

Chinese Duplicity

China’s attempted assault on the southern banks of the Pangong Tso on Saturday night has raised alarm on several fronts and, more disconcertingly, exposed a wide gap between what Beijing says through diplomatic channels and what the PLA actually does on the ground.

For weeks now, China has been reposing faith in the disengagement process through its statements, conveying a sense of progress and expressing intent to resolve. India has gone along with the hope that the slight pullback — meant to create distance between agitated troops — will eventually translate into de-escalation through a withdrawal of additional troops from eastern Ladakh.

But the truth is after the pullback from Galwan and some adjoining areas, the process has hit a wall. In Pangong Tso itself, Chinese troops withdrew only a bit and then stalled. And instead, the PLA has made preparations to sit out the winter. All military-to-military conversations in the past month have been quite rough and hostile, at times plain rude.

The chill has also set in on the regular hotline conversations between local commanders. It’s believed that even the initial pleasantries are not being exchanged these days. The tone and tenor, by all accounts, have begun to reflect the aggressive posture of PLA on the ground.

Doubts over PLA’s intent arose when the Pangong Tso disengagement conversation started to derail after the Chinese side proposed equidistant withdrawal. It was always understood that time taken to reach back current positions would determine the distance each side will pullback.

China has motorable roads and its forces can reach faster than Indian troops who have to walk large parts of the territory. So, PLA goes back more distance than India, knowing well that both sides will take equal time to reach back. Now, this fact based formula has informed India-China boundary management conversations for decades. Yet, the Chinese insistence to press ahead with the proposal raised doubts over the sincerity of the current negotiation.

The disengagement talks would run into hours without result but provoked a lot of heated exchange. India knew the discussions were stumbling but China kept conveying hope diplomatically, be it through statements of its ambassador in India as well as the Chinese foreign office, or for that matter its state-sponsored media. The problem was PLA was doing just the opposite, being aggressive and intransigent.

PLA’s Saturday night action needs to be understood against this backdrop. While exact numbers are not known, it’s believed that China breached the disengagement pact and started moving hundreds of troops to occupy tactically important hill features around the southern bank of the lake. India picked up the movement and preempted China by sending its troops to occupy some of the heights.

In the end, the disengagement truce was broken. No significant physical harm has been done so far but we have tensions running high as troops are now face-to-face with each other. All of this again raises the issue of trust. China started talking pullback before the June 15 incident and yet put up a tent at Galwan that became a source of contest, leading to a deadly combat. And now too, while talking disengagement, it has chosen to provoke.

In the absence of trust, motives come under doubt. Indian forces will have to assume that PLA’s actions are either unrestrained or, even worse, part of a well-orchestrated script where diplomacy is being used to provide cover to something more sinister.

In any which way, it’s clear now that disengagement has little shelf life without larger de-escalation. India has to test China’s intent by pressing for the latter and until then, be aware as well as prepared for the script to change dramatically overnight.

Rumblings in the Congress

Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said none of the issues raised by the group of 23 in the letter to party president Sonia Gandhi calling for reforms were discussed in the CWC meeting last week and there has not been any outreach from the leadership since the stormy session.

About the CWC meeting itself, Sharma said, “The issues we raised were never discussed, not one issue was discussed … It was said we had attacked the leadership of Sonia Gandhi. That was not true at all. I said in the meeting that the letter should be given to all the CWC members so that they know the contents. But that did not happen and people in the session were permitted to say things that cannot be allowed in a civilised meeting.”

Asked if there was a dialogue between the two factions, Sharma said, “Nobody has reached out to me. Only one leader called me but no call from the Congress president. There has also not been any outreach to Ghulam Nabi Azad. Rahul Gandhi called Kapil Sibal on the limited point (to clarify that he did not accuse them of being in collusion with BJP) and he also called Azad on that limited issue.”

“Having built the party, we did not deserve it. We had done nothing to warrant such uncharitable comments,” he said. Seen as one of the leading lights of the letter writer group Sharma, however, expressed optimism that there will be a discussion. “I do believe that with Sonia Gandhi as president, we have the collective wisdom to address these issues,” he said.

According to Sharma, they expect that they will be called for a discussion so that “there is no breakdown of communication”. “Had there been a meeting for five months …. But nobody met,” he stated.

Meanwhile, a group of young Congress leaders, seen as close to Rahul Gandhi, took to Twitter to term a news report as a “lie” that named them as having attended a virtual meeting with the former Congress president. The report alleged that Rahul told the meeting that he would retire the senior leaders in the party. Among those who slammed the report were MPs Rajeev Satav, Manickam Tagore and Ravneet Bittu, and Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev.

Chinese Dragon bares its fangs

If India would like a military showdown, the People’s Liberation Army is bound to make the Indian Army suffer much more severe losses than it did in 1962, hollered the hawkish Global Times in an editorial on the latest military flareup in Pangong Tso.

This followed a rare ‘survey’ by the Chinese government mouthpiece last week claiming 90% people were in favour of retaliatory action against India. Taking off from there, it said in the editorial that Chinese people had shown support for their government which “won’t seek to provoke India, but does not (sic) allow it to encroach on China’s territory”.

Global Times seemed to be itching for action as it urged the government to take military action “when necessary”. “China is several times stronger than India, and India is no match for China. We must smash any Indian illusion that it can deal with China by colluding with other powers, such as the US. The history of Asia and the world has told us that any force keen on opportunism tends to bully the weak while fear the strong. India is a typical opportunist when it comes to the China-India border issue,” it said.

It also said India should not have any illusions of Washington’s support and that India shouldn’t embolden itself by strengthening cooperation under the Quad framework.

China has been using coercive tactics in pursuit of territorial and maritime claims in the South and East China Seas, as well as along its border with India and Bhutan, the Pentagon added.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Beijing has built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in natural resources and are vital to global trade.

“China’s leaders use tactics short of armed conflict to pursue China’s objectives. China calibrates its coercive activities to fall below the threshold of provoking armed conflict with the United States, its allies and partners, or others in the Indo-Pacific region,” the Pentagon said in its annual report on China to the Congress.

Army thwarts China’s invasion bid in Ladakh

In a clear indication that the festering trouble in Eastern Ladakh is far from over, the Centre said that Chinese troops had tried ‘to change the status quo’ on the southern bank of Pangong Tso Lake on Saturday night but were stopped by Indian troops as the activity was ‘pre-empted.’ Sources said the incident is a cause of serious concern as this is a new conflict area. Even as China denied any such move, a Brigade Commander-level flag meeting was held in Chushul to resolve the issues.

An official statement by the Defence Ministry maintained that ‘PLA troops violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements during the ongoing standoff in Eastern Ladakh and carried out provocative military movements to change the status quo’ on the intervening night of August 29-30. “Indian troops pre-empted this PLA activity on the Southern Bank of Pangong Tso Lake, undertook measures to strengthen our positions and thwart Chinese intentions to unilaterally change facts on ground. The Indian Army is committed to maintaining peace and tranquility through dialogue, but is also equally determined to protect its territorial integrity,” the statement issued on Monday morning read.

Top sources said that a sizeable number of Chinese troops, some put the number at close to 200, arrived in a vehicular convoy and ran into an Indian post. The Indian Army that had prior intel about the Chinese movement and had mobilised forces was already present in the area thereby pushing them back. Sources said there were no physical altercations and no injuries or casualties on either side.

China, however, denied the development and claimed that their border troops ‘never cross the line of actual control.’ “Both sides are in communication regarding the situation on the ground,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing.

A Chinese military spokesperson, Colonel Zhang Shuili, also claimed that it was India that had violated China’s sovereignty. “The Chinese military is taking necessary countermeasures and will pay close attention to developments and resolutely safeguard China's territorial sovereignty and peace and stability in border areas,” he said.

Despite several rounds of diplomatic and military engagements between the two countries, the situation in Eastern Ladakh has been far from normal since the bloody clashes on June 20 in which 20 soldiers were killed at the Galwan Valley. Though Chinese troops pulled back from some of the conflict areas, Indian authorities have repeatedly raised the issue of their continuing presence and highlighted that the withdrawal of troops is not complete. Satellite images show Chinese presence on slopes along Finger 5 and on those extending towards Finger 8.

Ladakh LG Radha Krisha Mathur met MoS Home G Kishan Reddy in New Delhi to apprise him of the situation at the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh. The Ladakh-Srinagar highway was closed to civilian traffic reportedly for troop movement.

Adani acquires 74% stake in Mumbai airport

 The Adani Group is all set to become the country’s biggest private airport operator. Its flagship holding company, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd, will acquire 74 per cent controlling stake in the Mumbai International Airport and the proposed Navi Mumbai International Airport. The group had entered the aviation sector last year by acquiring 50-year operational rights for six newly privatised airports in Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Jaipur.

In an agreement signed on Monday, AAHL has agreed to acquire the entire 50.5 per cent stake of GVK Airport Developers Ltd in Mumbai International Airport Ltd. It will also acquire 23.5 per cent stake of minority partners – Airports Company South Africa and Bidvest Group, which hold 10 per cent and 13.5 per cent, respectively. The state-run Airport Authority of India holds the remaining 26 per cent stake.

The Adani group had been eyeing a controlling stake in GVK’s airport business for some time. The agreement comes within weeks of the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate opening investigations against GVK promoters over the alleged irregularities to the tune of Rs.705 crore in operating the Mumbai airport.

As per a disclosure to the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday morning, the Adani group said it will take steps to obtain the necessary customary and regulatory approvals, as may be required. The group will also infuse funds into MIAL for liquidity support and achieve financial closure of the Navi Mumbai project to commence construction.

For its part, the Hyderabad-based GVK group has agreed to “cooperate” with the Adani group. The terms of cooperation include GVK’s release from all obligations and corporate guarantees in respect to the debt it owes to lenders such as Goldman Sachs and HDFC, and the conversion of this debt into equity on mutually agreed terms with the Adani group.

Commenting on the development, GVK chairman, Dr GVK Reddy said, “The aviation industry has been severely impacted by Covid-19, setting it back by many years, and has impacted the financials of MIAL. It was therefore important that we bring in a financially strong investor in the shortest possible time.”

In a separate disclosure, GVK said it has notified its investors – the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment – that the transaction documents stand terminated, as it is no longer effective and implementable.