New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Monday said all private hospitals in the national capital, which were given land on concessional rate, must provide free treatment to certain percentage of poor patients.

Providing treatment to the poor was one of the clauses in the lease deed due to which land was given to hospitals at a very cheap price.

It is mandatory for private hospitals, built on land allocated by the government on concessional rates, to provide 10 per cent treatment to In Patient Department (IPD) and 25 per cent to Out Patient Department (OPD) for free.

A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra said any resistance by the hospitals would lead to cancellation of the lease and sought periodical report on compliance of its order from the Delhi government.

The bench said it will monitor functioning of private hospitals to ensure that the poor patients are treated free of cost.

Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency in 1975, plonk in the middle of the most intense phase of the Cold War. Détente was going so badly for the Americans that stand up comedians in Washington were comparing it to a wife swapping party “from where you return alone”.

After the Vietnam debacle, Washington was going to exert every muscle not to allow Moscow to build upon the strategic asset it had created for itself in New Delhi during the 1971 Bangladesh war.

In fact, the Congress split of 1969 was itself an advantage for Moscow. Indira Gandhi had discarded the conservative, pro-capital big wigs, more comfortable with Congress stalwarts like Morarji Desai whom she had defeated in the Parliamentary party contest to become Prime Minister in 1966.

Not only was a former card carrying Communist (from Eton and Oxford too), Mohan Kumaramangalam, part author of the split, he had worked out an arrangement with the General Secretary of the CPI, S.A. Dange, described as a policy of “Unite and Struggle”. We shall, said Dange, unite with the Congress’ progressive policies but “struggle” against its “anti people” deviations.

This was a pronounced leftward lurch and it was going to be resisted by a coalition of the Right, both internal and external. Indeed, as early as 1967, within a year of her coming to power, Indira Gandhi was given notice: she lost elections in eight states to parties of the opposition. This groundswell would obviously suit the purposes of the Congress old guard discarded by Gandhi.

The most succinct observation on Gandhi’s ideological leaning came from the correspondent of the Times London, Peter Hazelhurst: “She is a little to the Left of self interest.”

Her ideological inconsistency becomes apparent if one reverts to her earliest days in 1959 as President of the Congress. She dismissed the world’s first Communist government which had come to power through the ballot box in Kerala. That she took American help to unsettle Kerala to justify the state government’s dismissal was revealed by US ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker in an oral interview kept in the Columbia University archives. Whatever doubts there might have been about the Bunker revelations, were cleared later by Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his memoirs. 

During her Prime Ministership in 1976, the Congress party raised a storm against the US having installed a nuclear device on Nanda Devi peak to spy on China. The controversy had many twists. A joint CIA and Intelligence Bureau effort to install the device in 1965 (Lal Bahadur Shastri was Prime Minister then) had failed because of bad weather. Worse, two plutonium laden capsules had been lost. According to the Intelligence estimates the plutonium was enough for half a Hiroshima bomb.

In the course of an interview, Chester Bowles, US ambassador during Indira Gandhi’s first innings, took my breath away. He couldn’t understand Congress protest. “After all Indira had asked me to complete in 1966 the project which had been aborted in 1965.”

Well, this is how the Congress’ attitude towards the super powers varied from time to time. But for the West the spectacle of Gandhi and Dange in a warm embrace was alarming because of the context. The West had taken a series of knocks – Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua were all Communist. Additionally Communist leaders Enrico Berlinguer, Georges Marchais, Santiago Carrillo in Italy, France and Spain respectively were a headache for the West. Given this state of play, India was too priceless a trophy to be easily lost to Moscow’s sphere of influence.

The obstacle in the way of a counteroffensive was Gandhi’s personality. She had evolved into a charismatic and, therefore, invincible leader. Proprietor of the Indian Express, Ramnath Goenka and Nanaji Deshmukh, fell into deep thought.

The Indian mind reveres renunciation. It occurred to the head hunters that once a top ranking Socialist leader, Jayaprakash Narayan, had renounced political power. He was keeping himself busy with Gandhiji’s ashrams and such unlikely causes as Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan or Land Gift movement. JP agreed to lead the movement provided it remained peaceful. 

The youth were in agitation across the globe against the excesses of the Vietnam War – Grosvenor Square, London, barricades in Paris, police shooting down of students at the Kent state university in Ohio, US. Soon thereafter the Navnirman Andolan, youth agitation in Gujarat erupted on a seemingly flimsy issue of hostel fees. After visiting Gujarat, JP was prevailed upon to launch a similar movement against corruption and bad governance in Bihar. It was a tepid agenda livened up only by the media dedicated to the task of keeping up the pressure on New Delhi, boosting notions of a “total revolution” one day, asking police and the bureaucracy not to obey “bad” orders another, and so on. The immediate target of the “movement” was a hapless Chief Minister, Abdul Ghafoor, quite bewildered by his own eminence. Why was he in the eye of a storm? He had sunken cheeks and a drooping frame, draped in a much worn Sherwani. By way of hospitality for visiting scribes, he would fetch a bottle of old smuggler Scotch whisky from his wardrobe full of smudged clothes which were clearly waiting for laundry. He was a simple man, not a plausible enough crook to invite a national movement for his ouster.

JP, who had invited me to stay in his house in Patna’s Kadam Kuan, listened to my stories even about the Chief Minister with a kindly smile. He was a trusting man and totally non judgemental about the wide range of political interests who had clambered onto his movement.

The movement was carried mostly by RSS cadres, with a sprinkling of socialists, Gandhians and Congress (O), mostly those who had been shown the door by Gandhi in 1969. This exactly was the rough outline of the group which morphed into a coalition in the course of the movement. The coalition came to power in 1977 as the Janata Party. 

Supposing the Allahabad High Court had not disqualified Gandhi, how would events have shaped? If Sanjay Gandhi, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Muhammad Yunus and others had not forced her hand on the Emergency, how would the Gandhi-JP standoff have concluded?

(A senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be reached on saeednaqvi@hotmail.com. The views expressed are personal.)  (IANS)

It was success of this feel good romance that suddenly woke up the Indian spinners of mush and schmaltz to target the non-resident Indian audience, which was deemed as a quite lucrative option besides the home-crowds. It was also written and directed by Aditya Chopra and produced by his father Yash Chopra. The plot revolves around two young non-resident Indians, who fall in love during a vacation and meander through Europe with their friends. The film was shot on various locations in India, London and Switzerland, beginning from September 1994 to August 1995.

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge released on 20 October 1995, became the highest grossing Bollywood film of the year earning ?1.06 billion in India and ?160 million overseas. It won 10 Filmfare Awards, the most for a single film at that time, and won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film  Its soundtrack album was one of the highest selling albums of the 1990s and its ditties still blare on the radio nearly quarter of a decade later!

The film was praised for promoting strong family values and listening to one’s own heart and British Film Institute listed twelfth best on its list of top Indian films of all time. It went on to be the longest-running film in the history of Indian cinema. As of 2015, almost 20 years after its first release, it was shown last time on February 19, 1009 weeks – 19 years and 21 weeks – after it began playing on October 19, 1995. 

Aditya Chopra cut his teeth by being involved with his father in Bollywood’s grist during the making of Chandni(1989), Lamhe (1991) and Darr (1993) and then wrote Mohabbatein (2000). For three years, he worked on the story that would become Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge after his mother, the playback singer, screenwriter and producer Pamela Chopra, found that the idea was sound, he decided to make this his directorial debut. 

In May 1994, Aditya’s reading of the first draft of the script to several members of the Yash Raj Films production team who were assigned to work with him were not impressed to say the least he had total editorial control and mandate to make the film according to his own tastes and sensibilities. Aditya struggled with both the dialogue writer Javed Siddiqui and the song lyricist Anand Bakshi to develop words that were “young-sounding”.  DDLJ Â’s dialogue writer, Javed Siddiqui, also parted ways with the Chopras. Aditya, who says he rewrote much of the film’s dialogue, took the credit of ‘additional dialogue’. Siddiqui insists that his writing was hardly changed – Aditya only wrote some lines, which were added while shooting in Switzerland and that the joint credit was ‘an injustice’.

The veteran screenwriter Honey Irani and Pamela Chopra’s best friend  believed that it was proper she was given a writing credit Honey Irani and Pamela had been friends for twenty-two years. Her first script was Lamhe followed by Aaina and Darr and had had meetings with Aditya during which they had worked on the DDLJ screenplay. But Honey’s name does not appear on the DDLJ credits. Aditya maintains he only had four sessions with her, and then wrote the film on his own. Honey disagrees and says thatthey had several 7 a.m. meetings on DDLJ and she even accompanied the unit for the Switzerland schedule. After Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, neither of them ever collaborated with Yash Raj Films again..

All the senior actors had been doubtful of Adi’s ‘newbie’ directorial skills initially. Amrish Puri used to quiz him with questions like ‘What time is it in London right now’ to check how well he knows his story and his characters.

Aditya Chopra had originally wanted Tom Cruise for the male lead falling in love with an Indian belle but was dissuaded by Yash, who did not want to use a foreign star.  Saif Ali Khan was interested to play the lead but declined for unknown reasons later. It was Shah Rukh Khan who was approached, who was initially not interested in a soft romantic role in lieu of his dark roles in Baazigar and Darr (1993) that had made him such a hot property. 

It was Salman Khan who pumped Shah Rukh to take the role that he had dismissed as the typical lover boy and “girlish” kind of role. Not only Salman but Aditya Chopra persuaded Shah Rukh by telling words that he was refusing a role that will make him “every woman’s dream man, and every mother’s dream son!” The poster of this film signed by Shah rukh Khan in Aditya Chopra’s office is an acknowledgement of gratitude- ‘Thank you for making me the star that I am today’

Kajol a good friend of Aditya Chopra was the first choice to play Simran, to which she quickly agreed. Yash Chopra wanted Milind Gunaji to play Kuljeet. But the actor refused to shave off his beard for the part. Armaan Kohli was the second choice, but he wanted to play the lead and not the villain. So they finally signed Parmeet Sethi. Mala Sinha’s daughter Pratibha was the first choice for Preeti’s character, which was finally played by Mandira Bedi.The brat pack came to full circle with Uday Chopra and his friend  Karan Johar playing cameos in the film as Raj’s friend. Sharmishta Roy was the film’s art director and Manish Malhotra was its costume designer.

Kajol admits that Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge was the corniest title she had ever heard. She had cracked up the first time she heard it. And while Chopra loved working with Kajol, he realised that her spontaneity fizzled out like soda pop after the first two takes, therefore he took to getting the shot from her before her third try.  Kajol’s all green mehndi attire became a huge hit so much so that even at her own wedding Kajol wore a green Maharashtrian sari. It was Manish Malhotra’s idea to dress Kajol in a green outfit for the song Mehndi Laga Ke Rakhna much against the wishes of the director since north Indian brides traditionally wear red, maroon or pink, considering them auspicious colours.

Dilwale Dulhania was first Indian movie with a Dolby sound mix and was the first film in the history of Bollywood with a credit of  ‘title suggested by’ Anupam Kher’s wife, actress Kirron Kher taking inspiration from the Le Jayenge number from Chor Machaye Shor (1974).. The first sequence filmed was for the song Ho Gaya Hai Tujhko in Switzerland. The European portion mainly filmed in Saanen, Montbovon and Gstaad, Switzerland, in England, atTrafalgar Square, King’s Cross railway station and Angel tube station. But if you think India did not figure in the film then you’re wrong, three weeks before his January schedule, cinematographer Manmohan Singh, a regular collaborator with Chopra  and Aditya were scouting for sarson. Yash, Manmohan and Aditya travelled through Punjab, but sarson proved elusive. There were occasional blotches of flowers and not a sea of yellow! It was finally neighbouring Gurgaon where the idyllic carpets of yellow flowers with a train track going through it were found! 

Saroj Khan remained the choreographer for most of the production despite several disputes between them, she was however replaced by Farah Khan near the end of the shoot recommended SRK. Farah choreographed the song Ruk Ja O Dil Deewane. Saroj Khan apologised to Aditya Chopra after the film became a huge success for having doubted his talent.

Shah Rukh was in a crossfire between this film and Trimurti(1995), spending half of his day on each film. SRK’s full name in the movie was Rajnath fashioned after Rishi Kapoor’s name in Bobby. In the scene whereAnupam Kher tells SRK about the drudgry of his forefathers in academics he recited names of his real uncles who were academic duds! Amrish Puri based some of his character’s nuances on his own highly disciplined father and K L Saigal was in reality Amrish Puri’s favourite singer! 

Jatin and Lalit Pandit were given only 10 days to compose the complete background score, and the first copies were printed on 30 September. Aditya Chopra not happy with Jatin-Lalit’s first para (mukhda) for Tujhe Dekha Toh Yeh Jana Sanam composed Ho Gaya Hai Tujh Ko Toh Pyaar Sajna all by himself! Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye was the first song of the film to be recorded and Aditya Chopra had rejected 24 verses written by Anand Bakshi before giving the go ahead to the final one. The film made in the 25th year of Yash Raj Films premiered at Mumbai’s New Excelsior theatre on October 20, the debutant director joined his music directors, Jatin and Lalit Pandit after interval, in the foyer. The standing ovation at the end of the film went on for five minutes!

After filming was complete, Aditya decided to make a Hollywood-style documentary of the film-making process, never been attempted ever before in India. On 18 October, two days before the film’s release, DDLJ was the first film to have a 30-minute television show on its making telecast on Doordarshan.

In 2009, the then Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit confessed that she had viewed the super-hit Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge 15 times in presence of Yash Chopra present at the event.

Digital devices have now become such a big part of so many people in India that two-thirds of users in the country find it difficult to stay away from their mobile phones even for a day, shows a new survey.

The global average of users unwilling to separate from their mobile phones stands at 48 per cent, according to the report titled “The State of Digital Lifestyles – 2018” from Limelight Networks, a global digital content delivery platform.

Indian consumers ranked second, after Malaysia, for being the most addicted to their digital devices, showed the findings based on a survey of consumers in 10 countries. 

Laptop and desktop computers were the second most integral digital technology for Indian users, with 45 per cent of respondents reporting that they could not go without them for even a day, which is highest in the survey and 12 per cent more than the global average of 33 percent, Limelight Networks said in a statement. 

More than 90 per cent of Indian respondents said digital technology had positively impacted their lives.

India users also showed the highest level of engagement across all types of online digital content among all the countries surveyed. 

More than 75 per cent Indian respondents said they downloaded or streamed music at least once a week, the highest rate among the surveyed countries. 

Indian respondents also displayed higher inclination to downloading movies and watching them offline, which is 12 per cent higher than the global average, the report said. 

“India has made remarkable progress in terms of digital adoption. One of the key takeaways from the survey has been that the Indian users are clearly more willing to adopt digital products and services and make it a part of their day-to-day lives,” said Gaurav Malik, Country Head, India at Limelight Networks.

“This is a positive sign for all stakeholders, including market players, consumers and the government as it leads to a win-win proposition for everyone and will boost the productivity of the nation as the digital adoption increases,” Malik added.

NEW DELHI: Madhur Prabhakar, who recently gave up his secure government job to pursue his tech dream and latched on to the bandwagon of Start-Ups, has already won acclaim in the House of Lords and last month in the Bahamas. 

His initiative to root out corruption and malpractices like fake degrees and cheating in on-line exams led him to flock to the growing global community of Blockchain.  

He founded EQUATE Platform which strives to remove corruption and manipulation from the current examination and educational set up. ”Education is the most important part of a person’s life but sadly in recent times education has lost its true essence with so many cases of corruption and scams being highlighted in the news on a daily basis,” said Mr Prabhakar. 

Equate Platform is the World’s first and only Blockchain based ‘Online Skills Assessments’ platform (patent pending) that uses ‘Proof Of Assessments’  by leveraging ‘Artificial Intelligence’ powered Smart Contracts. Equate Platform’s unique architecture puts an end to the major problems plaguing the Education sector like paper leaks, counterfeiting of educational transcripts, Resume Frauds etc.

Last month he was invited by the Prime Minister’s Office of the Bahamas for  the ‘Bahamas Blockchain Conference 2018 at Grand Lucayan Convention Center , – an initiative by the government of Bahamas  to align it’s continued efforts to develop Freeport, Grand Bahama Island as the “Silicon Valley of The Caribbean”,

Renowned personalities like Anthony Di Lorio (CEO of De-Central), John Rolle (Governor, Central Bank of The Bahamas) and Dr. Hubert Minnis (Hon’ble Prime Minister of The Commonwealth of the Bahamas) graced the event.

Bahamas Blockchain Conference is a great opportunity for new and upcoming ventures based on this revolutionary technology to present themselves at a global level to attract governments, institutions, investors and beyond, cyber world experts say. 

ABB (India Limited) will collaborate with the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee to construct an operational Smart Electricity Distribution network and management system (SDNMS) in its campus.

The two have signed a Memorandum of Understanding under which this will serve as a pilot project for the Government’s `Smart Cities Mission. The agreement also includes the creation of a Smart Grids Resource Centre and joint R&D facilities in the field of efficient power generation and distribution with a focus on clean energy over the next five years.

IIT Roorkee and ABB will collaborate in assimilating various supply and demand side equipment, devices and systems into an automated and hybrid energy distribution and management system for the campus. ABB will also provide design, engineering, procurement, testing and other services for the SDNMS project, expected to be operational in  2018-19.

India, the world’s third largest consumer of electricity, is working to transform its urban energy infrastructure to make it more citizen-friendly and sustainable. A cost-effective smart distribution system has the potential to significantly reduce India’s carbon footprint.

According to Mr. Sanjeev Sharma, CEO and MD, ABB India: “ABB has a strong relationship with India, having collaborated on several projects over many decades. Our agreement with IIT Roorkee strengthens ABB’s mission to nurture innovative thinking that helps people lead better lives.”

“The project signed today serves as a proof of concept of using smart grids and intelligent automation to efficiently manage power distribution. It would make India’s vision of power to all a reality and ultimately realize ABB’s goal of building technology that runs the world without consuming the earth, Mr Sharma said.”

IIT Roorkee has been working to build a more eco-friendly campus using solar energy for power generation and utilization in various forms.ABB has a strong portfolio of products for the integration, distribution and automation of interconnected renewable energy sources that form local distribution grids.

Prof. Ajit Chaturvedi, Director, IIT Roorkee, said, Â“IIT Roorkee has been harnessing solar energy not only for electricity generation but also for providing direct hot water to all its hostels and residences in the campus, and also carries out solar based cooking in the hostels.”

“The smart energy management and distribution agreement with ABB takes us many steps closer to creating a 100percent green campus and achieving zero carbon dioxide emission in the long run, he added.”

ABB’s equipment, such as the ring main unit upgrade, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, microgrids and energy management systems will be installed to automate and remotely monitor, control and measure the campus grid. The integrated system will offer more power resilience, lower costs due to reduced dependency on electricity sourced from the government utility and diesel generators.

ABB experts will provide inputs for the creation of an SDNMS simulation at the SGRC which will serve as a platform for testing new ideas and techniques for field trials before deployment. A joint R&D facility on campus, supported by ABB, will be created to tighten collaboration between academia and industry and nurture talent through ABB-sponsored scholarships.  

Over 80 researchers from 11 countries launched an observational study to understand sepsis in newborns and current antibiotic prescribing practices. This is part of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership’s (GARDP’s) broader programme to develop new and improved antibiotic treatments for newborns.

The observational study, led by the GARDP, is benefiting from US$2 million funding from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support study sites in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.

While significant progress has been made in recent years to improve child health globally, including a 50 percent reduction in child mortality since 1990, the number of preventable deaths in newborns remains unacceptably high. Neonatal deaths now represent 44 percent of all deaths in children under the age of five. Of great concern are the estimated 214,000 deaths in newborns attributable to drug-resistant infections.

The data generated from the study will inform GARPD’s ambition to develop and deliver new antibiotic treatments for newborns with drug-resistant bacterial infections. Limited research on newborns has resulted in a lack of evidence about appropriate treatment of serious and drug-resistant infections in this vulnerable population.

Sepsis, the body’s response to infection, can be life-threatening and poses a particular threat to newborns as their immune systems are not fully developed.  Increasing rates of bacteria resistant to existing treatments are reported globally, with hospitalized newborns and infants at high risk of developing drug-resistant hospital-acquired infections. Newborns’ susceptibility to sepsis is further compounded by the challenges of diagnosing serious bacterial infections since symptoms and signs can be non-specific and difficult to detect.

The observational study is being carried out in hospitals /neonatal units in Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Greece, India, Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam and Uganda. The study has three sites in India (Lady Hardinge Medical College, New Delhi, KEM-Mumbai and JIPMER in Puducherry). The study focusses on collecting clinical information on babies with significant /clinical sepsis. 

The study will generate a robust evidence base on how neonatal sepsis is managed which can be used as a basis for evaluating future interventions in neonates. Outcomes of interest will include mortality, antibiotic use and duration of antimicrobial therapy – there are currently few data on these parameters.

“We are grateful for Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s commitment. Antibacterial resistance is one of the main barriers to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal to reduce neonatal mortality,” said Dr Manica Balasegaram, Director of GARDP.

New Delhi : To celebrate the invention of a powered vacuum cleaner by Hubert Cecil Booth more than a century ago, Google on Wednesday marked the British engineer’s 147th birth anniversary with an interactive Doodle.

The Doodle depicts an operator cleaning a carpet using Booth’s first design, nicknamed “Puffing Billy”, which was powered by an engine so big it had to be pulled around by horses and parked outside the house to be cleaned.

Though it was a far cry from the upright and handheld vacuums people use today, Booth’s invention forever changed the way we clean our homes — and made sweeping dirt under the rug a thing of the past, Google said in a statement. 

At the break of the 20th century, cutting-edge floor-cleaning technology involved blowing air and pushing debris, but Booth was intrigued by the inverse idea — cleaning by suction.

After seeing a demonstration of the “pneumatic carpet renovator” blowing dirt out of railway cars, the Gloucester-native tested his own idea.

To see how much dust he could remove by suction, the British engineer put his handkerchief to his mouth and sucked the air through it.

Inspired by the results he set to work on his first design — the Puffing Billy.

Booth started the British Vacuum Cleaner Company in 1903, and his flagship product – a somewhat smaller electric device – was soon embraced by fashionable households and even the British royal family. 

Booth’s contributions were not limited to changing the cleaning process only. He was a man of many talents who built bridges, designed engines for Royal Navy battleships, and ferris wheels in England, France, and Austria. 

But the Puffing Billy assured that his legacy would live on. 

Booth breathed his last on January 14, 1955.

Taking cognisance of the Indian government’s concerns over the misuse of its platform for repeated circulation of provocative content, Facebook-owned WhatsApp on Wednesday wrote to the IT Ministry saying the company is horrified by terrible acts of violence.

Reacting to the growing instances of lynching of innocent people owing to large number of irresponsible messages filled with rumours and provocation circulated on WhatsApp, the IT Ministry on Tuesday asked WhatsApp to take immediate action and ensure that the platform is not used for such malafide activities.

“Thank you for your letter dated July 2. Like the Government of India, we’re horrified by these terrible acts of violence and wanted to respond quickly to the very important issues you have raised. We believe this is a challenge that requires government, civil society and technology companies to work together,” WhatsApp said in the letter sent to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

WhatsApp which has over 200 million monthly active users in India, listed a number of measures it has taken in the recent past to control the spread of misinformation and abuse on its platform.

“We have been testing a new label in India that highlights when a message has been forwarded versus composed by the sender. 

“This could serve as an important signal for recipients to think twice before forwarding messages because it lets a user know if content they received was written by the person they know or a potential rumour from someone else. We plan to launch this new feature soon,” the company informed. 

According to media reports, over 30 people have been killed in the past one year by lynch mobs after rumours of child lifting triggered via messages on WhatsApp. 

In Mid-May, said WhatsApp, it added new protections to prevent people from adding others back into groups which they had left — a form of misuse we think it is important to correct. 

“Last week, we launched a new setting that enables administrators to decide who gets to send messages within individual groups. This will help reduce the spread of unwanted messages into important group conversations – as well as the forwarding of hoaxes and other content,” the popular messaging platform noted.

WhatsApp has also announced a new project to work with leading academic experts in India to learn more about the spread of misinformation.

“The fact-checking organisation Boom Live is available on WhatsApp and has published some reports on the source of the rumours that have contributed to the recent violence,” the company said.

While WhatsApp messages can be highly viral, the way people use the app is by nature still very private. 

“Many people (nearly 25 per cent in India) are not in a group; the majority of groups continue to be small (less than 10 people); and nine in 10 messages are still sent from just one person to another,” WhatsApp informed. 

The company also asked to Indian government to talk further about the actions it is taking and its plans going forward. 

“With the right action we can help improve everyone’s safety by ensuring communities are better equipped to deal with malicious hoaxes and false information — while still enabling people to communicate reliably and privately across India,” it noted.

WhatsApp also announced to soon start an engagement programme with the law enforcement officials across the country so “they are familiar with our approach and how we can be helpful”. 

A majority of Indian and foreign investors consider that high oil prices have emerged as a significant risk to the country’s economy, Moody’s Investors Service said on Wednesday.

The US rating agency’s report is based on a survey of 175 respondents, including from over 100 financial institutions at the annual India Credit Conference in Mumbai and Singapore held in June.

Investors were asked questions on issues like top risks facing the Indian economy, fiscal deficit, the recapitalizsation package for public sector banks and credit conditions for Indian corporates among others.

“Most of the respondents highlighted high oil prices as the top risk while 30.3 per cent of those in Singapore picked rising interest rates as the next top risk and 23.1 per cent of those in Mumbai picked domestic political risks as the second top risk,” Moody’s Vice President Joy Rankothge said in the report.

Most respondents said they believed India would not meet the central government’s fiscal deficit target of 3.3 per cent of GDP for the current fiscal. 

While only 23.3 per cent of the investors in Singapore and 13.6 per cent in Mumbai felt that the fiscal targets would be achieved, 84.7 per cent in Mumbai and 76.7 per cent in Singapore expected some fiscal slippage.

On the government’s bank recapitalisation plan, 85.7 per cent in Singapore and 93.6 per cent in Mumbai thought that it was insufficient to resolve the non-performing assets (NPA), or banks’ bad loans, challenges.

In this connection, while 59.6 per cent of the attendees in Mumbai thought that banks will be unable to raise capital from the markets, 32.1 per cent in Singapore felt the same way.

Respondents in both locations said funding conditions will be one of the top factors driving the outlook for non-financial corporates – 38 per cent in Mumbai and 34.6 per cent in Singapore.

According to the report, 28 per cent of respondents in Mumbai selected the resumption of capital investment as the second key factor affecting credit outlook while only 11.5 per cent felt this way in Singapore.

In contrast, 26.9 per cent of the Singapore attendees selected government policy and reforms as the second most important factor affecting the credit outlook, compared with 22 per cent in Mumbai.