In the pandemic days, the British government provided businesses with over £100 billion of support to get through a crisis. Rishi became British Chancellor of Exchequer (British Finance Minister) in February 2020. Weeks later, the United Kingdom declared a lockdown that forced the British government to announce the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme,known as the furlough scheme. The scheme provided grants to employers to pay 80 per cent of their staff wage and employment costs, up to £2,500 per employee a month, until September 2021 after several rounds of extension. To compensate for the outgo from the exchequer, the British Finance Minister announced a hike in corporation tax from 19 per cent to 25 percent from 2023. This is the first time the British government has decided to r...
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Much has changed in recent years. No one has noted many of the changes, because the change was insignificant but consistent. Too many moles make a mountain. Himalaya melted more significantly in the last four decades filling the rivers and flooding their basins. Over 1.2 billion people on earth depend on the water resources of melting Himalayan ice. Faster melting depletes the resources equally faster and consistent reduction in mountain size, significantly influencing the monsoons in the east, west and southern hemisphere. Thus, the rain-fed regions are put to face a potential danger of dwindling rains and erratic weather conditions. The Himalayas will continue to face the impact of climate change and man-made environmental offences. As the world knows, China is making the planet an unli...
Read MoreGulam Nabi Azad is the new political focal point. Branded now a rebel within his party, the staunch Congress leader since Indira Gandhi days, is now an unwanted man by his party for his G23 venture, a rebel faction against the present leadership. Azad is one of the soberest faces of Congress, unlike most of the leaders within the group. As a true nationalist Muslim, one-time Chief Minister of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, even the Hindu nationalist party also never questioned his integrity and secular approach. That has brought immense respect to this Kashmiri Muslim leaderacross the country. His elevation to national politics was rapid. A Congress block committee president in 1973 became All India President of All India Youth Congress seven years later. The last ministerial post h...
Read MoreIn India, politics and economics are interlinked. Apparent welfare measures and freebies are thesensitive vote catchers as well as the biggest sources of frauds at the ground level. Though the practice of DirectBenefit Transfer (DBT) has considerably reduced the malpractices at the delivery level, economic misuse forpolitical gain is still prevalent, as it is hard to do away with the so-called socialist legacy. Almost every political debate takes place on the government's policy measures without subjecting them to a wise analysis. Even deemed wise men talk unwisely.Based on the media judgement, many times government used to roll back policy decisions and budget proposals. But that was the first time, the Union Finance Minister had reversed the rate cut announcement within a time between d...
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The second wave of the Covid-19 shows how messy our healthcare systems are and how generously we play double standard in the name of social distancing. When every second person is testing positive, no tight restrictions can remain alive for long. Even in our nightmares, we didn’t think the government would take this card again. The experience was worse and the result was heavily disappointing, still using the same strategy. Now 13 months through the trouble. Of late, it is getting worse. A whole house has been burned to kill the lizard on the girder. The purpose isn’t achieved. The burned house bears the face of a ghost. Yet we laugh it off. That is how we can summarize the terrific mismanagement of the Cvid-19 pandemic. Now we have started counting the wave, which Europe, the US an...
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Premas Biotech, a developer of novel biotherapeutic and vaccine candidates, with Oramed Pharmaceuticals, announced the development of an oral Covid-19 vaccine that has shown efficacy after a single dose. Premas, Oramed and other shareholders, have formed Oravax Medical, which has received exclusive licenses from Oramed and Premas to develop oral COVID-19 vaccines. After a single dose of the Oravax COVID-19 capsule, efficacy was evident through antibody production in a pilot animal study. Oravax’s vaccine promoted both systemic immunity through Immunoglobulin G (IgG), the most common antibody in blood and bodily fluids that protects against viral infections and Immunoglobulin A (IgA) which protects the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts against infection. Premas’ protein-base...
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Routinely, a section defies government orders, States defy Central orders, farmers defy farm laws. With the same equation, if people defy orders of lockdown, unafraid of infection and finding it unnecessary, a legible question of what is immoral in it is unanswerable. Politicians and bureaucrats have become great fans of the highly disgusting and notorious word “lockdown“, which appeared in Maharashtra’s air again amid the "rising number" of Covid-19 cases. At the fag-end of February 2021, eleven months after the doomed lockdown was set out, the threat of a similar lockdown would only mean hell. According to Dr Giridhara Babu, an epidemiologist, “Lockdown was necessary in March 2020 as the health system had to be upgraded to ensure adequate oxygen supplies, medicines as well as human re...
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One may argue that the government has taken a hasty decision of arresting the environmental activists and allege the government for distracting public attention from farmers’ strike. While the action rewarded the antagonists with a chance for gaining popularity, the protagonists seem to have lost a manageable battle. Often aggressive government action, sans wisdom, breaks out unintended and undesirable consequences. Some actions draw not only reactions but also multiple actions, which breed new heroes. The arrest of some new names like Disha Ravi, who is said to be an environmental activist, for sedition made them steal the media limelight. The Toolkit was a tool for someone to spring into action, making them action heroes. When people spend crores of rupees t...
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Is too much transparency and liquidity in Equity, tempting investors to take too many decisions?
A Investor, while calculating the return from the conventional investment products like real estate or gold, is done over a long period, returns from equities are calculated on a microsecond basis daily. ‘There are plenty of reasons, which influence price movements. An investor gets the price of equities regularly but seldom knows the value. It is easy for an investor to exit and enter without any major incidental cost. because equities are more liquid, giving an investor enough comfort to exit anytime he needs. Moreover, there is a high level of transparency in equity products. ...
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There are two aspects linked with an investor's risk tolerance actual financial capability (risk capacity) to bear unforeseen losses and emotional capability (risk tolerance) to live with the loss. If an investor is unable to emotionally bear the loss under an unforeseen circumstance, he may be tempted to exit the market with his loss in hand without thinking further, although he had the financial capacity to bear the notional loss. For such a category of investors, market volatility is unacceptable and emotionally forbidden. They move out of the market at the wrong time and swear never to return. That is a folly driven either by fear or greed. For example, had an investor made a bet on stocks a year before the lockdown started, out of fear, he would have sold all his equities in Marc...
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