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India is running a large current account deficit with imports exceeding exports. The curent account deficit for the year ending March 31 was $88.2 billion, about 4.8% of GDP. With foreign investment declining remittances from Indians abroad are a major source of incoming capital. Indians overseas sent about $69 billion in remittances home in 2012, increasing from $63 billion in 2011, according to the World Bank. In August 2013 India's central bank relaxed restrictions on interest rates for overseas Indian rupee accounts and on foreign currency denonimated deposits. This has led to a sharp increase in remittances by Indians overseas, with HDFC bank reporting a 30% increase in remittance volumes in June 2013 compared to January 2013.

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Reliance's Indian web browser JioPages supports 8 Indian languages, encrypted connections, and is available for download on Google Play Store.

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Tata Technologies, a division of Tata Motors, shows the Emo concept electric vehicle at the Detroit Auto Show. It was designed by American, British and Indian engineers.

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Inspirational talk given to Prime Minister's Office Staff on June 10, 2024, by Indian PM Narendra Modi. In this video Modi tells staff about the nature of the PM's office as a catalytic agent for creating new enthusiasm and energy for the nation's development efforts. Before 2014 prime ministers before him considered this as a power center, says Modi. He tells staff that the development effort was hard work for achieving the vision of a modern developed nation Vikshit Bharat 2047. That this was work 24 hours a day 7 days a week to accomplish goals set to meet the aspirations of 1400 million people in India. He says three points to remember was that work had to be done with concentration on the goal without getting distracted and determination to achieve it, second to have the character to do this in real life setting priorities and tasks. Third, the frame of mind that is always learning, always studying, always acquiring new knowledge about the tasks ahead.  ...

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NYT reporters show China is continuing to crack down on what it sees as companies that break the law. This adds to risks of companies operating in China leading to companies not adding to investments in China and looking at options of manufacturing or doing business in other friendly locations such as India and Vietnam for manufacturing. New deals are also being done with South Korea, Japan instead of China as China's surveillance of business grows and risks increase of operating in China.

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To make a dent in carbon emissions governments in Europe and North America need to support the use of low carbon solar panels in solar facilities installed there. This would enhance solar energy panel production in the US and Europe, India, other countries. Experts say the use of solar panels made using electricity from coal use in China creates more emissions in China while reducing emissions in the West. The result is that global emissions remain the same as if no solar panels were installed.  The global solar panel production is mostly concentrated in China because of the lower cost of electricity from coal used in production of panels- a critical factor in the lower prices of Chinese made solar panels. This allowed China to gain a monopoly in production of  world's polysilicon, an essential component in solar panel production, that consumes large amounts of electricity in the manufacturing process.  This use of coal generates twice the amount of carbon emissions in China than the solar panels made in Europe, say experts. As a result the governments and companies in Europe, US and India are shifting to local manufacturing of solar panels. ...

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The auto parts industry is seeing a huge transformation as American Axle, Visteon and other companies look to Europe, Asia and other countries for growth and shift to a lower cost manufacturing base overseas. Costs are in many cases about 5 times in the USA than in other countries in Asia. And health care costs are a major part of the costs the auto parts makers face in the USA. To get an idea of how fundamental a change is going on American Axle which in 1995 did not have a plant overseas now expects 75% of its $1.3 billion in product orders to be met by plants overseas. And it is planning to build plants in India and Thailand. Visteon which used to be part of Ford Motor and made parts like heating and cooling systems mainly for Ford, will by 2010 according to Visteon's CEO, have sales to Hyundai and Kia of 28% of sales, making the Korean company its largest buyer. Ford's North American operations will only account for 6% of sales from 15% today. That is a dramatic change and involves closing plants in the US. For Visteon this means $635 million in cost reduction mainly through plant closings in 2008-2010....

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The P1 coronavirus variant from Brazil is seen in 200 of 877 cases in ski resort in Whistler, British Columbia. Helath officials have little knowledge of how this variant entered Canada's western province. This report says the housing shortage for hospitality workers is worsening the pandemic with 6-8 hospitality workers living together and no chance to limit the spread.   The decision by the state health officials not to screen with testing for which variant is responsible for an infection of covid is coming under criticism, as reported in The Guardian. This allows the variant to spread with no knowledge about where it is happening so that countermeasures can be taken. In the absence of this type of screening and testing one is flying blind, says this report. Recent steps to contain the spread in India advocated by prime minister Modi in India give micro-containment a big role, with screening and testing and detection of incidence of mutation becoming critical. To do this the health system has to be well prepared and have full support and direction from a unified authority bringing together every arm of government at the federal, state and local levels. Response has to be very quick and resource allocation proper from testing labs, people on the ground, vaccine supplies, and vaccination drive effective. ...

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Indian prime minister Modi meets president Putin in Sochi, Russia. India is seeking to maintain its ties with Russia even as Russia seeks a new relationship with Pakistan including sales of military transport. Putin and Modi support a multi-polar world order in their discussions. India has 62% of defense imports from Russia in the last 5 years, as it shifts to a relationship of jointly developing arms systems and technologies, and shifting purchases to other countries. India joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization with Russian support. Russia is also active in building Indian atomic energy plants.

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Keith Bradsher of the NYT points out that the tariffs war between China and the U.S. is not just about trade and competitive advantage. He says this marks a fundamental shift in the way China operates as the world's manufacturing floor. Gradually change is taking place as production moves out of China to places such as Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and other countries in Asia. The entire supply chain for manufacturing is affected in the tariffs war and the U.S. insistence on China changing its policies subsidizing manufacturing plants to maintain an export advantage in violation of WTO principles for fair trade.

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Trupti Shete of Aurangabad is one of 21 women pilots of 91 who will operate the new Metro 2A and 7 in Mumbai inaugurated by prime minister Modi. She did her bachelors in electrical engineering. For 3 years she struggled to get a job. Building much needed infrastructure means new opportunities for young people in India.

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US vice president Kamala Harris's grandfather was in the Indian Civil Service and was sent to Zambia as an adviser to president Kenneth Kaunda to help with settlement of refugees fleeing Southern Rhodesia during apartheid. She revisits Lusaka and the place where she lived.

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The instruments on board the Orbiter for Chandrayan 2, India's Moon mission, will be enabling much of the scientific work. The Orbiter is functioning well and will be there for 7.5 years providing critical scientific data on this side of the moon, even though the Vikram Lander did not function as planned.

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This BBC Travel story about mindfulness, a sort of meditation with nature, and getting close to nature as a sort of healing inside, comes from the southern region of Western Australia, 360 kilometres southeast of Perth. It could have come from native peoples in America, Asia, Africa or other parts of the world. The author visits the Noorang people, part of the 750,000 native people who lived there when the first British settlers arrived there in 1788. Captain Cook had just landed there in 1770 as part of British Navy and Royal Society expedition on the ship HMS Endeavour. Today this is part of the Botany Bay National Park in the Sydney region of eastern Australia. The author visits the streams rivers and hills in the region near Perth as he undergoes a kind of spiritual reconnection with nature. The less the vibration man has the more the mindfulness and ability to connect with nature and the inner self, the author is shown as he lets things go soaking himself in a river. Many native people's rituals and are ways to respect nature and connect to it as to a mother.  In India modern people relate to ancient civilization through yoga and spiritual writings from an earlier period. There too the idea of nature or rivers and mountains as spiritual and healing, strengthening of body and spirit can be seen. The Narmada river flowing from east to west across mountain ranges in India is seen as a spiritual  mother just as rivers are in this story about native peoples in Australia's southern region south of Perth, western Australia. ...

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The entire area from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of the US in Pacific is now being covered as the Indo-Pacific region with the US, India, Australia and other nations committed to keeping the international rule of law and freedom of navigation.German Air Force takes part in a joint military exercize of 17 countries for Indo-Pacific in Darwin, Australia. The focus was on rapid deployment. The German Bundeswehr transfer of fighter jets and supply planes in mid-August Rapid Pacific 2022 was done within 24 hours for 6 Eurojets fighter jets, four transport aircraft, and 3 air to air fueling tankers, with 100 tons of material. The exercize from Aug 19 to September 8 was for 2500 personnel and 100 aircraft from all over the world called Pitch Black in Australia's Northern Territory. Next year Gemany plans to have its army participate in Australian exercize. An entire fleet unit is being set for German navy to return to the Pacific waters.  ...

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The Indian Finance Minister Mukherjee presented his new budget and talked about the new administration's plans for investment and its priorities. The Rural Employment program which guarantees 100 days of work to each indigent family will get an increase in funding to $8.1 billion or 391 billion rupees for this fiscal year. THe goal was set for cutting in half the percentage of the people in India that are poor in five years, which the government measures by calories consumed. The Indian government estimates that 27.5% of Indians were poor in 2005 using this measure. To finance investment government spending will increase 36% and the deficit for the 2009-10 fiscal year will reach an estimated 6.8% of GDP, up from an estimated 6.2% in 2008. Abig part of this spending will be increases in infrastructure spending which will go up from 6% to 9% of GDP by 2014.

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Without government aid about 12 million more people would have fallen into poverty in the US during the pandemic in 2020-2021. This is evident from census figures analyzed in the WSJ and NYT. The Supplemental Poverty Measure -which takes into account a broader range of income and expenses including hundreds of billions of dollars of pandemic aid -shows that poverty actually declined, dropping by 2.9% to 9.1%, as a result of government taking action in the US under the Trump and Biden administrations. The $400 billion  dollars of stimulus checks and aid during the Trump and Biden administrations in 2021 have made a real difference in the lives of not just poor Americans but Americans in the middle class and all sections of society. Similar aid was delivered in the European Union and Britain. In India government aid was distributed by depositing money directly into hundreds of millions of bank accounts of poor and marginal income people. Aid included food aid in grains, lentils and vegetables directly provided at subsidized prices or free by the government. Right wing or left wing government designations were meaningless as governments of different persuasions acted decisively to provide direct and timely help in US, Europe, and India. ...

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Australian cricket captain Aaron Finch is only 6 runs short of Indian Virat Kohli as the highest run scorer in ODI one day cricket. His batsmanship has revived the Australian team with 6 centuries and 8 half centuries since the beginning of 2019 and a total of 1739 runs in 35 games.  Only Rohit Sharma comes close in centuries scored.

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Strange as it may sound the retired coal power stations in Europe were back in operation and highly profitable during the COP26 Glasgow conference. Unknown to speakers at the conference calling stridently for complete coal phaseout instead of rapid phasedown including speakers from the European Union and from Tuvalu (population about 1500) this was happening not just in China but also in Europe. This was dictated by energy economics as coal prices have come down by half and natural gas prices have risen ten fold, and natural gas shortfall in Europe.  This report in the WSJ shows coal and lignite plants making huge profits for electricity companies in Europe. As a result the calls for phaseout were seen as hollow by China and India in the last days of the conference leading to the language change in the final agreement to "phasedown of fossil fuels." Natural gas producing power stations are losing 2.26 euros for every megawatt hour, compared to 57 euros per magawatt hour for coal powered power plants, 4 times as high as the previous highest levels in 2017, as reported in the WSJ. Estimates are for coal power stations to be more than gas rivals till 2023. Germany says WSJ still has highest level of addiction to coal and lignite. It generated 40 gigawatts of electricity from coal and lignite in September and October, the highest for these 2 months since 2018, Poland is doing the same exporting its coal based power to the rest of Europe. In the same way coal power plants that were idled are back producing electricity in Spain, Portugal and in UK home of the COP26 Glasgow conference.   ...

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With the decline of its hardware business making iPhones Apple is looking at other fields. It is launching cheap online TV subscriptions in streaming wars in competition with Netflix and others. Apple is launching a new TV streaming service Apple TV+ in 100 countries for 4.99 British pounds a month undercutting Netflix's price of 5.99 pounds. The new service will be started November 1, 2019. Disney plans a streaming service for 7 pounds a month starting November 12. This service is alongside iPhone 11 launch and anew iPad, a new iWatch. Buy any new Apple device and you get a 1 year streaming service free.  Sales of iPhones fell 14% in the April to June 2019 quarter to 39 million units. Samsung's business is growing by 4% to 75 million units and Huawei by 16% to 58 million units. Apple sees the need to increases its services business with a target of $50 billion in 2020. Apple sees itself more as a media and cloud services company as it makes this change. In markets such as India Apple's growth is limited by its failure to lower prices on new iPhones. In China it faces strong competition from Huawei. The trade tensions are increasing the strength of Chinese brands in the Chinese market. The market in U.S. and Europe is saturated after years of expansion. New iPhone models are costly and bring peripheral advantages such as more and better cameras and features such as screens that are not breakable- for the iPhone 11- not dimensions that are critical for making a costly purchase. After years of growth tech companies such as Apple, Google, Alibaba, Amazon are reaching a point where incremental growth is not what it used to be and most of the rapid growth behind them. Trade tensions are also limiting the outlook in the Chinese market, and pricing remains a major factor in the Indian market. Western markets are saturated. There are fewer and fewer substantial new ideas from these tech companies. ...

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Alexander Freund of DW.com looks at the BRICs conference in Xiamen, China, and says its members are all facing serious problems at home. China's growth has slowed, and it faces problems with large debt, need to reorient the economy away from dependence on exports, and a bubble in real estate markets. Russia and Brazil are both hit by drop in oil and commodities prices, and Brazil's ruling elite faces corruption charges. South Africa's economy under president Zuma faces problems of mismanagement of the economy and corruption. Only India says Freund, is the bright light in this group. The Modi government in India is working on removing barriers to growth such as bureaucratic hurdles, unification of tax scheme through the new unified GST for the whole country, and efforts to attract foreign investment. In many ways the BRICs has become a thing of the past as China focusses on its own Belt and Road Initiative and tackles its internal problems. The border dispute between India and China at the time of the BRICs conference in Xiamen shows a lack of policy agreement on economic and development priorities between the two major countries in that group. This had the effect of reducing whatever impact BRICs had in the past. The term originated at an American investment bank and it appears to be an odd grouping of countries today. ...

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This analysis by The Hindu says Mr. Modi mattered more to the electorate in Uttar Pradesh than the chief minister Mr. Adityanath. A sense that the development agenda is the way forward for the state and for India appears to have been on the minds of people in the state, says The Hindu, based on its analysis of sentiment in the state. About two fifths of the people in the state who participated in the recent election had positive views of the development work of the Modi government at the national level.

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The Trump administration proposes a zero policy for Iranian oil imports which says the U.S. will grant zero exemptions to countries importing Iranian oil.  Big importers China and India are likely to resist this policy.

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India is building roads and facilities to match China's in the border between Ladakh and China particularly in the finger area. This is resulting in increased clashes between Indian and Chinese patrols. India's view of the territory on its side does not coincide with China's. India has seen borders such as the McMahon Line set during the British period as the border, China has a different perception since its takeover of Tibet of what constitutes Tibetan territory.  As a result any true border line depends on the strength of bases of each side on the high altitude border at over 4000 or 5000 meters. China had built infrastructure in the region much earlier and India is merely catching up to keep the current line of control as the border. The Indian perception is that China sees as a way to change the status quo building bases and capabilities in the region, making it necessary for India to match these capabilities by roads and bases of its own.   ...