Innholdsfortegnelse for 30-May-21 i Business Today

India has taken a diametrically different view on climate change for the external world — and the internal. For the larger world, there has been a tough as titanium stand that those who polluted for decades via massive industrialisation of their economies have no right to preach from the pulpit when India needs to industrialise rapidly. We shall be the masters of our destiny. Instead, the world must measure per capita emission rather than absolute carbon footprint — an area where West still outdoes India on emissions. That stance, though, is vastly different from the aggressive green efforts at home to live in harmony with nature. The nation has set and achieved some tough targets. In the third Biennial Report to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)…

AT the FII Investment Institute Conference in June last year, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani mooted an idea of using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a raw material rather than a liability. Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman al-Saud, Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia, and Patrick Pauyanne, CEO of Total, were also present at the conference. “If we take a clean sheet of paper and adopt technologies whereby we can complete the energy cycle, we can adopt new technologies, particularly biochemical photosynthesis,” he said. He then went on to speak about carbon recycling and completing the carbon cycle, which was disturbed by the industrial revolution. “There is a need to provide efficient, clean and affordable energy. And we have to do it in a respon-sible way. That’s the business,” he said. Ambani…

Indian railways moves 24 million passengers every day — a shade less than the population of Australia — on 13,000 trains, around 67,956 kilometres across the sub-continent. Add to that another 3.3 million tonnes of freight — 1,200 million tonnes during 2020/21 — daily, and the fuel needs are immense. As a result, the carbon footprint of the Indian Railways is mammoth. According to the railway ministry, the national transporter consumed 115.45 lakh kilo litres of high-speed diesel between 2014/15 and 2018/19. But, change is happening and that too rapidly. In 2019/20, 43 per cent of passenger traffic was hauled by diesel locomotives, and 57 per cent by electric traction. That’s a sharp change from 2000/01 when diesel locomotives handled 56.1 per cent of passenger traffic and electric traction was…

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COMPUTING HP has been actively using ocean-bound plastic in its laptops such as the HP Elite Dragonfly, EliteBook and Pavilion notebooks. While some of the materials used in these machines are recycled, HP’s Probook Series has over 62 per cent of mechanical parts made from recycled metals and plastic. Even its speaker enclosure is made from 50 per cent reprocessed material. The keyboard keycaps are made from 50 per cent recycled DVDs and the keyboard deck and bottom chassis using 90 per cent recycled magnesium. Over the last decade, Apple’s iPad has evolved as a great multipurpose device. Even though crafted using 100 per cent recycled aluminium enclosure, the iPad Air 2020, with flat edges and rounded curves, has a premium look and feel. Besides, Apple has also used 100…

An engineer by profession and a singer by heart, for Jaya Jagadish, Country Head, AMD India, music is much more than just a hobby. “It’s a crucial part of my life,” she says. Hailing from a family where music always played in the background, Jaya took to strings and the notes since birth. “My grandmother used to sing. My father is a violinist and mother plays the veena. The environment at home was filled with music, dance and drama.” It was at the age of six that Jagadish started taking formal music lessons, but her family emphasised on studies than pursuing a career in music. “It was not said in those many words, but coming from a middle-class family, it was implied. I did think about leaving engineering and pursuing…

↘ India’s finished steel exports during FY21 hit 10.8 million tonnes, a 29.1 per cent increase over FY20, driven largely by China ↘ India net exporter of finished steel during the fiscal with net trade surplus of six million tonnes ↘ Import of finished steel at 4.8 MT was lower by 29.8 per cent over the previous year ↘ Share of export to Italy rose to 22 per cent in March 2021 from 12 per cent in March 2020. Share of export to Spain and HK rose to 5 per cent and 10 per cent, respectively, from under 1 per cent…

Little has changed over the years in the narrow bylanes of Seelampur in the national capital, India’s largest unorganised e-waste recycling hub, as hundreds of establishments, big and small, salvage computer peripherals, laptops, mobile phones and other electronic waste in the most unscientific way. Government regulations on e-waste management have had little impact here. If Seelampur represents how India has decided to handle one of modernity’s biggest problems — e-waste — things are hardly better in other parts of the country. India is now officially the world’s third-biggest e-waste generator, producing over 3.23 million metric tonnes of e-waste per year, behind the US and China. While hardly anything ends up in a landfill, the big worry is that 95 per cent of e-waste still continues to be handled by the…

WHEN NITIN GADKARI, Minister for Road Transport and High-ways and MSME, spelt out the contours of India’s first vehicle scrap-page policy in mid-March, it was the culmination of a process that started more than a decade ago. The multipronged policy, which seeks to replace ageing and outdated vehicles in favour of modern and more technologically advanced versions on the road, would effectively come into force only from June 1, 2024 when fitness tests become mandatory for most cars and SUVs. Under the new policy, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has advised automo-bile manufacturers to provide a 5 per cent discount on the purchase price of a new car for anybody who buys them after scrapping the old vehicle. It has also asked state governments to waive off registration…

Titan Company MD C.K. Venkataraman calls himself an “obsessive singer”, who hums the yesteryear classics of Kishore Kumar, Mukesh and Mohammad Rafi through the wee hours of the morning. Often, he records the songs and sends them to his friends and colleagues and asks for an honest feedback. His predecessor, former MD Bhaskar Bhat, is also known to be a good singer, and Venkataraman fondly remembers the innumerable duets he and Bhat sang during off-sites. Music, however, is just one among the lifestyle company head honcho’s multiple passions. He also cooks every weekend. Though he mostly churns out exotic South Indian dishes, he also enjoys making poha and sabudana kichdi, which he learnt from the cook at the Titan guest house in Mumbai. Venkataraman is an ardent student of Indian…

In 2015, Tata Power Company had a gross generation capacity of 8,726 megawatt (MW), mainly 7,607 MW of thermal power. Its green energy portfolio was barely 1,119 MW comprising 573 MW of hydro, 487 MW of wind and just 59 MW of solar. It had plans to add another 9,105 MW, of which thermal was 8,270 MW and just 835 MW of hydro and renewable power. Six years later it’s a different story. Tata Power has 12,772 MW of installed capacity, but thermal capacity has been increased to just 8,860 MW. Instead, it now has 3,913 MW of clean power, including 1735 MW of solar and 932 MW wind, 871 MW hydro and 375 MW of waste heat recovery. The increase in thermal capacity was due to an acquisition of…

The sleepy coastal village of Alang, about 50 kilometres from Bhavnagar in Gujarat, also known as the largest ship-recycling hub in the world, had a bad reputation until a decade ago. Reports highlighted horror stories about its poor infrastructure, environmental pollution from hazardous waste such as asbestos, engine oil tainting sandy shores and the Arabian Sea, accidents and death of unskilled labourers, etc. But Alang now has a new reputation — it is the greenest and safest ship-breaking hub, dismantling 30-35 per cent of ships recycled a year, globally. The near-four-decade-old Alang of today is the result of concerted efforts — court interventions, government initiatives and above all, committed efforts of ship breakers to upgrade to international standards to win business. How It Was Earlier Alang-Sosiya Ship Recycling Yard was…

Currently, the flavour of the global narrative beyond Covid-19 is “WITHER CAPITALISM”. The narrative is pervasive through the corridors of academics, C-suites, citizens’ forums to political chambers, albeit in different nuances of inequality, environmental degradation, sustainability of the planet and firms and profit with PURPOSE. The concept of a limited liability firm with unique features of (a) perpetual succession, (b) common seal, and (c) separation of management with ownership has been one of the greatest inventions of early modern times. The firms have been a significant multiplier of human efforts and creators of wealth and have transformed the beastly planet Earth into a civilised world. It facilitated uplifting billions of homo sapiens from utter poverty and economic deprivation. However, it also led to the concentration of wealth in the hands…

For the three founders of popular Indian Social media apps Sharechat and Moj, brotherhood defines their relationship. Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan, who met at IIT Kanpur, founded Mohalla Tech in early 2015. Interestingly, all three have been living under the same roof for nearly a decade. “We have a strong bond and brotherhood. Every night we have dinner together, where we talk and chill out. We are lucky to be so close,” says Sachdeva. Before the pandemic, the three friends would go on holidays together and travel. However, after the launch of short-video platform Moj, life has been hectic for the last nine months. When not working, the three friends like to play games on Xbox, but post pandemic, they prefer playing with their pet in…