Covid-19: Maharashtra deaths go past 40k

Continuing with high Covid-19 fatalities, Maharashtra added 308 deaths, taking the toll to 40,040. Over 37% of the Covid-19 deaths reported nationally were from the state, which added the last 10,000 deaths in merely 25 days. The state had 30,409 deaths on September 15.

The state case fatality rate was 2.6%, higher than the national rate of 1.5%. The state added 11,416 cases, taking the total caseload to 15,17,434.

The rise in cases in Mumbai on Saturday was 2,203, a dip from the the sharp increase to 2,800-plus on Wednesday and Thursday. The Covid-19 tally stood at 2.27 lakh. There were 48 deaths, taking the toll to 9,391. “The number of cases had risen for a couple of days, but it could be due to some special collection drives we organise from time to time,” additional municipal commissioner Suresh Kakani said.

For over a week now, the state has reported more daily discharges than daily additions, and the trend continued on Saturday as 26,440 people were discharged, taking the total discharges to 12.5 lakh and the rate of recovery to 82.7%.

Active cases in the state were on the decline. There was a total of 2.2 lakh active cases in the state.

Banks’ RTGS Facility to Go 24x7 from December

In a move set to benefit businesses that transfer high value payments, the RTGS channels operated by banks will be functional 24X7 around the calendar from later this year.

“In order to facilitate swift and seamless payments in real time for domestic businesses and institutions, it has been decided to make available the RTGS system round the clock on all days from December 2020,” central bank Governor Shaktikanta Das said during his Monetary Policy Committee address.

“In December 2019, the RBI made available the NEFT system on a 24x7x365 basis and the system has been operating smoothly since then,” he said. India will be among the few countries globally that have enabled large ticket payments round the clock.

Currently, there are two major channels for large ticket transactions: National Electronic Fund Transfer  and Real Time Gross Settlement. Both are controlled interoperable payment channels used for fund transfer by entities between different accounts.

While NEFT transactions are done in time batches, which cause slight delays in payments, RTGS transactions are instantaneous.

However, while NEFT doesn’t have any minimum transaction limit, RTGS can only be used for high value transactions with a minimum limit of ₹2 lakh.

The RTGS system is currently available for customers from 7 am to 6 pm on all working days of a week.

India successfully tests indigenous anti-radiation missile Rudram-1

India successfully tested a new, indigenous air-launched missile called ‘Rudram-1’, which is designed to destroy a variety of enemy surveillance, communication and radar targets on the ground after being fired from Sukhoi-30MKI fighters.

The new generation antiradiation missile Rudram-1, which will take some time to become operational, has a strike range from 100-200 km depending on the altitude from which it is fired.

The missile, with a launch speed from Mach 0.6 to 2 (twice the speed of sound), was tested from a Sukhoi jet against a ‘radiating target’ on the Long Wheeler Island off the Odisha coast around 11.15 am.

“The Rudram-1 missile, which has INS-GPS navigation with a passive homing head for the final attack, manoeuvred towards the target based on direction detected by the seeker and hit it with pinpoint accuracy. All mission objectives were successfully met,” a DRDO scientist said.

DRDO has conducted a series of tests of different weapon systems in recent days amid the ongoing military confrontation in eastern Ladakh with China. They include the indigenously-developed hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle, extended range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile (400-km range), among others.

Free media here: India taunts China on Taiwan

In a dig at China, India said Thursday there’s a free media here that reports “as it sees fit”. The remark by the spokesperson followed China’s appeal to the Indian media this week to follow One-China policy.

“There is a free media in India that reports on issues as it sees fit,” external affairs ministry spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said at a media briefing.

The Chinese embassy spokesperson on Thursday tweeted that Taiwan was an inalienable part of China’s territory. India does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. “One-China policy is int’l universal consensus & longstanding position of #Indian govt, which China appreciates. It’s wishful thinking to seek any ‘Taiwan independence’,” tweeted the spokesperson.

“All countries that have diplomatic relations with China should firmly honor their commitment to the One-China policy, which is also the long-standing official position of the Indian government,” said the spokesperson in a letter to the Indian media. This was after advertisements by Taiwan government in a couple of Indian papers.

Meanwhile, Taiwan foreign minister Joseph Wu scoffed at Beijing’s advice. “India is the largest democracy on Earth with a vibrant press & freedom-loving people. But it looks like communist #China is hoping to march into the subcontinent by imposing censorship. #Taiwan’s Indian friends will have one reply: GET LOST!” he said in a tweet.

Risky to permit Huawei in India: Ex-R&AW boss Sood

Former R&AW chief Vikram Sood says there are powerful strategic, technological, geopolitical and legal reasons to suggest it could be risky to permit Chinese telecom major Huawei, with its state-structured backing, to launch operations in India’s critical infrastructure. The Centre is yet to take a call on allocating radiowaves despite telecom operators applying for spectrum to start 5G trials. In his book “The Ultimate Goal: A Former R&AW Chief Deconstructs How Nations Construct Narratives”, Sood says “the Chinese government financed Huawei and had moral compunctions in helping intellectual property theft in the US”.

Maharashtra: Shirdi-Nagpur super e-way stretch by May

From May 2021, motorists will be able to drive on a major portion of Maharashtra’s Balasaheb Thackeray Mumbai-Nagpur super expressway, also known as prosperity corridor, to cut short travel time between the state’s first and second capital in record time, MSRDC, the state’s infrastructure arm, announced on Thursday.

A 520 km Shirdi-Nagpur stretch of the upcoming 701 km super-communication highway will be operational from May 2021, MSRDC MD Radheshyam Mopalwar told the media. A 153 km stretch between Amravati-Aurangabad out of 520 km is ready, he added, pointing out that a 50 km stretch on the route between Washim-Buldhana may be delayed a bit.

Over 20,000 labourers are working, as against 18,000 in pre-Covid times, on the Rs.55,000 crore project.

Mopalwar said by December 2021, the stretch up to Igatpuri (total 623 km between Nagpur-Igatpuri) will be operational. By May 2022, the entire corridor will be operational, cutting short 16-hour travel time to eight hours. He said though Covid had delayed the project by three months, there was no cost escalation as it was being built on a fixed-cost basis.

Joint MDs Anilkumar Gaikwad and Dr Chandrakant Pulkundwar said of the proposed 19 planned townships along the corridor, development plans for eight were ready and land acquisition for six will be completed by June 2021. The industrial and logistical townships will accommodate one lakh people each.

MSRDC will seek its board’s approval to lease out land parcels at Bandra, Nepean Sea Road, Pune Expressway in Pune city and Kolhapur to earn around Rs.15,000 crore. The earnings will help MSRDC reduce the financial burden for its multi-crore projects.

RBI keeps policy rates unchanged

The monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of India kept policy rates unchanged, and the governor assured that the worst was possibly over for the economy and it can now hope for steady recovery towards pre-pandemic growth rates.

The newly-appointed six member MPC voted unanimously to keep the policy repo rate at 4 per cent, and said the real gross domestic product growth rate in 2020-21 could be a negative 9.5 per cent, with “risks tilted to the downside.”

The stance of the policy would remain “accommodative,” for “as long as necessary – at least during the current financial year and into the next year – to revive growth on a durable basis and mitigate the impact of Covid-19, while ensuring that inflation remains within the target going forward,” RBI governor Shaktikanta Das in his streamed monetary policy address on Friday morning.

The RBI governor also assured adequate liquidity support for the bond market, including promise of more open market operations through which the central bank buys and sells bonds from the market. For the first time, the RBI will also conduct OMO on state development loans, or bonds issued by states, to contain their spreads over equivalent maturity government securities. The RBI governor urged to cooperate with the central bank on conducting the centre’s and states’ borrowing programme, and said the RBI and the bond market can be “competitive without being combative.”

The shorter and longer tenure bonds rallied. The 10-year bond yield fell 8 basis points to 5.937 per cent, while the three-year bond yield fell 16 basis points.

The breakup given was the GDP of negative 9.8 per cent in the second quarter ended September, negative 5.6 per cent for the third quarter ended December, and a positive 0.5 per cent in the fourth quarter ended March. The economy contracted by a record 23.9 per cent in the first quarter ended June.