E-visa facility for Chinese tourists from tomorrow: The electronic tourist visa facility for Chinese nationals (and Hong Kong and Macau) announced by the Prime Minister in May will be rolled out from July 30 onwards. Under this, a Chinese national does not need to get a visa approved in advance from Indian embassies in China before his travel to India, but can simply apply for an email authorising him to travel to India. He can then travel to India with a print-out of this authorisation. On arrival, the visitor has to present the authorisation to the immigration authorities who would then stamp the entry into the country. (India has already allowed this for about 75 other countries).
Opinion/Editorial
Reclaiming a space for the Church: No need to make notes out of this or anything. Just read once, because it is an excellent read of the direction that the Catholic Church is headed to, and what relevance it has in today’s consumerist world.
Sowing the seeds of a disaster: “Compensatory Afforestation” is the planting of trees elsewhere to compensate for the loss of forest cover in one place. This loss of forest cover usually occurs when a reserved forest or protected area gets utilized in urbanisation. The cost of planting the new trees usually comes from taxes levied on the development projects.
Although the Central govt has stated that development will not be pursued at the cost of India’s remaining forests, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill in its present form could cause wastage of staggering amounts of money on meaningless afforestation projects that won’t do any good.
Benchmarks for banks: An investigation into the problems of national banks in India vis-a-vis the private banks, and what measures can be taken to improve the public banks. Must read.
International/World Affairs
NATO backs Turkey’s war on ‘terror’: Turkey has been hitting strongholds of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in its South-East regions. (The backing was obvious, given that Turkey is a member of NATO).
China says it is not planning military bases in the Maldives: Maldives passed legislation last week to allow foreigners to own land within a project site on condition at least 70 per cent of the area is reclaimed from the sea. This has been seen warily in India as an opportunity for military expansion by China. But China has said that it is not planning to build military bases on the Maldives.
Economy/Business
Q1 show disappoints: All public banks banks have reported lower profits as a result of higher provisioning and rise in non-performing assets (NPAs) during the first quarter of 2015. Don’t remember figures because more editorials like today’s “Benchmarks for banks” are going to come on this issue.
China firm on intervention to stabilise stock markets: The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has refuted rumours that it would not intervene to stabilise stock markets after share prices experienced the biggest single-day decline in eight years yesterday. See the newspaper of July 9 (China meltdown panics Asia) for the original article.
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