From The Newsroom: PM Narendra Modi releases Rs 17k crore for farmers

Today's From The Newsroom podcast talks about the following news events of the day: Prime Minister Narendra Modi transfers Rs 17,000 crore directly into the bank accounts of 8.5 crore farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme; investigators begin examining the black box of Kerala crash plane; The Defence Ministry comes out with a list of 101 military items that would not be imported anymore.

Here are the top news of today, Sunday: August 9, 2020:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday transferred Rs 17,000 crore directly into the bank accounts of 8.5 crore farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme.

He said the scheme has been successful in its objective to provide financial support to farmers without any involvement of middlemen.

The Centre provides Rs 6,000 per year in three equal instalments under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme that was launched in December 2018.

The prime minister "released the 6th instalment under the PM-KISAN scheme of Rs 17,000 crore to nearly 8.5 crore farmers. The cash benefit was transferred directly to their Aadhaar verified bank accounts with the press of a button", an official statement said.

The amount was transferred to farmers at a function organised through video conference to launch a financial facility of Rs 1 lakh crore under the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund.

"No middlemen, no commission. The amount was transferred directly to farmers," Modi said.

The scheme has been successful in its objective to provide direct help to farmers and when needed, he added.

Investigators on Sunday began examining the black box of a Boeing-737 that overshot a runway on its second attempt, killing 18 people in the country's worst aviation accident in a decade.

The Air India Express plane, which was repatriating Indians stranded in Dubai due to the coronavirus pandemic, overshot the runway of the Calicut International Airport in heavy rain near the southern city of Kozhikode on Friday.

The aircraft fell into a valley and broke in half.

In an interview with ANI on Sunday, Anil Kumar, head of India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said the country would open the recovered transcripts to international investigators, as well as manufacturer Boeing.

"Only after conducting a thorough and unbiased probe, can we tell what exactly happened," Kumar said.

The 2,700-metre runway at the airport is known as a "table-top", an aviation term for runways with steep drops at one or both ends.

They leave little room for error should a pilot overshoot the runway, either through human error or mechanical failure.

The Enforcement Directorate on Sunday tightened its grip around actress and model Rhea Chakraborty and her brother Showik in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case filed by the agency against them surrounding late actor Sushant Singh Rajput's assets.

Showik was seen exiting the ED office on Sunday morning after appearing before the central agency on Saturday at around noon, after over 18 hours of grilling. Rajput’s family has accused his girlfriend Rhea and her family of swindling the actor's money totalling over Rs 15 crore.

On Friday, Rhea and Showik, and the late actor and model’s ex-business manager Shruti Modi appeared before the ED where they were grilled for nearly eight hours. The ED had also questioned Rhea's father Indrajit Chakraborty and her chartered accountant (CA) Ritesh Shah on the same day.

Local investors have made Rs 900 crore investment in Jammu and Kashmir since the abrogation of special status of erstwhile state last August while there has been no investment from outsiders in the Union Territory in one year.

Official figures reveal that local investors have shown interest in the industrial sector in Kashmir which has seen lockdown and uncertainty since August 2019 and made Rs 900 crore investment, while outside investments are nil.

“Despite lockdown and uncertain situation since last August, it is an encouraging sign that local investors have invested Rs 900 crore in the industrial sector. However, outsider investors are reluctant to take any risk at the moment due to which no investment has been made so far,” a senior official of J&K Industries department, told DH.

He said so-far there is only hype in the media about outsiders investing in Kashmir. “But the reality is there has been no investment in the last one year and things look gloomy for coming months also,” the official added.

Though the much-hyped Global Investors Summit, which was scheduled to be held in May, had generated Expression of Interests (EOIs) of Rs 23000 crore from around 66 outside companies, it was put on hold due to Covid-19 pandemic. Earlier, in October last year, the summit was postponed due to the security situation in Kashmir that time.

The Defence Ministry on Sunday came out with a list of 101 military items that would not be imported anymore, realising a proposal announced by the BJP-led central government three months ago.

To be implemented over the next four years, the negative list of imports is likely to spawn indigenous production of military hardware in tune with the Narendra Modi government’s pet scheme of Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India).

Much, however, would depend on the extent of participation by the Indian private sector in manufacturing such products because in its present format the list of 101 embargoed items is a veritable inventory of the items already developed by defence public sector undertakings and ordnance factories and used by the armed forces.

The move was first announced by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in May as a part of the measures being undertaken by the Modi government to come out of the economic crisis precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Between April 2015 and August 2020, the three services imported military equipment and components worth Rs 3.5 lakh crores. “With the latest embargo on import of 101 items, it is estimated that contracts worth almost Rs four lakh crore will be placed upon the domestic industry within the next five to seven years,” the ministry said in a statement.

Of these, items worth Rs 1,30,000 crore each are anticipated for the army and the air force while items worth almost Rs 1,40,000 crore are anticipated by the navy over the same period.

Neither the statement nor the list, however, clarifies how many of the items currently being imported by the military are on the embargoed list.

For instance the list carried two satellites for the armed forces GSAT-7C and GSAT-7R that are on the embargoed list from December 2023. The fact, however, is that for decades Indian satellites are always made at home as there is no question of importing a satellite.

Since the list contains products already manufactured by the Indian defence PSU, ordnance factories or private companies, it contains several artillery guns manufactured by the private and public sector over the last seven-eight years.

Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Sunday hit out at Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, saying the "import embargo" on defence equipment announced by him was "high sounding jargon" as their only importer was the Defence Ministry.

The defence minister promised a "bang" on a Sunday morning and ended with a "whimper", Chidambaram said in a series of tweets.

"The only importer of defence equipment is the Defence Ministry. Any import embargo is really an embargo on oneself," the former home minister said.

What the defence minister said in his "historic Sunday announcement" deserved only an office order from the minister to his secretaries, Chidambaram said.

"Import embargo is high sounding jargon. What it means is we will try to make the same equipment (that we import today) in 2 to 4 years and stop imports thereafter!" he said.