Unbelievable but true: There is nothing—repeat, nothing at all—in Piyush Goyal’s interim budget to deal with India’s festering jobs crisis.This is crazy since a lack of employment (especially for the young) and the problems in agriculture have emerged as the two biggest issues in the Indian economy and society today. It is also politically tone deaf since the government should really have been on the back foot on this one, as its suppression of official jobs data (the National Sample Service Organisation Survey of 2017-18) cleared by the National Statistical Commission, had just been exposed.Under the circumstances, it was only to be expected that there would be some measures to tackle the problems of open unemployment and poor quality jobs—or at least some lip service to this—in the interim finance minister’s budget speech. Remarkably, Goyal chose to brazen it out, only referring periodically to how different policies are bound to create more jobs, but never proposing any strategy to revive employment.For example, a simple and obvious thing to do would be to fill up all vacancies in central government employment—currently around 2.4 million. But the budget estimates do not suggest that an expansion of that order in occupied posts is even being considered.Instead, there is the promise of an income transfer scheme for farmers (but so poorly thought through that it may backfire and will not solve the problems of Indian agriculture). Then there are some income-tax sops to the middle classes (though these are also too limited in scope to have much effect on aggregate demand just now). There was no evidence of any fresh or even systematic thinking on the issue of job creation.The Modi government never really liked MGNREGA.The most important direct intervention—and one that has become even more urgent and necessary given the severe drought now affecting at least eight states—is under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The Modi government never really liked this programme, and despite words to the contrary, has actually sought to starve it of funds over the past few years. Even though it is legally a demand-driven programme for which funds must be provided when work is demanded, the reality has been quite different and the programme has been limited by central allocations.Each year, the amount provided by the centre to the state governments has fallen well below requirement, and the amount has been carried over to the next financial year, so that each year begins with a large deficit of spending that has not been funded. The current year was no different, and so the budget allocation was well below the requirement since it included around Rs15,000 crore of money owed to the state governments. By early December, the full amount of the budget outlay of Rs55,000 crore had already been spent. The revised estimates include only a further Rs6,084 crore increase, suggesting that the centre will not provide any more money to states for this programme in the remaining part of the financial year.In any case, the record of the skill development mission has been pathetic so far.This leads to cutbacks in the programme, as well as huge arrears in wage payments that lead to workers getting disheartened and losing interest. This has implications well beyond the welfare of potential workers on the programme. It loses the potential for significant positive multiplier effects from such spending, which could have the impact of reviving the rural economy. Indeed, the only positive thing to be said for the planned income transfer to small and marginal farmers is also that: It will lead to some increase in aggregate demand and provide a stimulus to rural economic activity.Other employment-oriented programmes of this government that were trumpeted with much fanfare earlier are now being quietly shelved or provided such little money that they could not possibly make much difference. The money spent on “jobs and skill development” was only Rs6,830 crore, but in any case, the record of the skill development mission has been pathetic so far.The most shocking is the spending on the much-hyped schemes to encourage self-employment like MUDRA, Stand Up India, and StartUp India, which government spokespersons regularly refer to as great examples of the prime minister’s “vision.” The total budgetary spending on all such schemes taken together under the credit guarantee funds of the finance ministry is only Rs515 crore for 2018-19, less than half of the budgeted allocation of Rs1,020 which is itself a paltry amount. And the future allocation for these schemes is also only Rs515 crore, suggesting that the government also doesn’t really think they will amount to much.This is a huge issue because it turns out that the job crisis is even more dire than many of us had suspected. The Business Standard newspaper’s report on the suppressed NSSO survey reveals a grim story of falling labour force participation rates and rising unemployment rates—suggesting quite dramatic adverse changes in the labour market. Indeed, the data point to a 2.7 percentage point decline in aggregate work participation rates from 39.4% in 2011-12 to 36.7% in 2017-18, an unprecedented shift in a period of supposedly rapid income growth. Meanwhile, unemployment rates among the youth (between 15 and 29 years) have surged to extremely high levels, including for educated young people. Overall, open unemployment numbers increased from around 11 million in 2011-12 to 31 million 2017-18—an increase of 20 million mostly young jobless people in just six years!This confirms the employment crisis revealed in surveys by private organisations. The All India Manufacturers’ Organisation estimated that in December 2018 that 3.5 million jobs had been lost since 2016. A study by Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy suggested that 11 million jobs were lost in 2018 alone.Instead of trying to address the problem, government spokespersons stubbornly persist in claiming that all is well on the employment front. The only problem, they say, is that data do not capture the terrific employment dynamism indicated by the expansion of taxi-hailing apps Uber and Ola, e-trading platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, and others. Ministers now suggest that the employment survey must be wrong because the GDP has been growing so fast. But unfortunately, the GDP figures themselves are no longer credible after the latest revisions, which have made the year of demonetisation that of the fastest growth in the past decade.It is surprising that a government with its back to the wall on the employment front can afford to be so casual about even being seen to do something about it. Perhaps it is hoping that the employment creation in the form of gau rakshaks (cow protectors), love jihad vigilantes, and others of that ilk will be enough to create the political momentum required to carry it through the elections.We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

Dimitri Kanevsky has been researching the use of speech-recognition technology as an aid for people who are deaf or hard of hearing for more than three decades—for many years at IBM, and, since 2014, at Google. So when I met him at a recent Google event focused on the company’s accessibility efforts, I asked if he ever dreamed back in the 1980s that technology would ever get as good at understanding spoken words as it is in 2019.“No, I expected it would become so good in five years,” he responded. “And after five years, in the next five years. And then the next five years.” It was only when he joined Google that the tech achieved the accuracy that he once thought would come fairly quickly.Live Transcribe [Image: courtesy of Google]If speech recognition hadn’t become really good, we might not have been able to talk about it so freely: Kanevsky has been deaf since the age of one. But as we discussed his work, he glanced at his phone, which gave him a transcription of what I was saying. It was so instantaneous that he began answering my questions as I was finishing asking them, as he might have if he—rather than his phone—was hearing my speech.As you might have figured out by now, Kanevsky was using an Android app that he had a hand in developing. Field-tested at Gallaudet University, the famed school for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, the app is called Live Transcribe. It works with more than 70 languages and dialects and will be available through Google’s Play Store—at first as a limited beta—as well as pre-installed on Pixel 3 phones.Live Transcribe aims to put real-time transcription in the pocket of people who need it so it’s available anytime and anywhere. That stands in contrast to old-school remote transcription services performed by human specialists, which require advance scheduling and carry substantial hourly fees—not a huge problem for something like a business meeting, but an obstacle if you just want to ask a question of a coworker, chat with a friend, or play with a grandchild.Anyone who’s used Siri, Alexa, or the Google Assistant knows that computers have gotten dramatically better at accurately understanding speech in recent years. But there’s a big difference between understanding spoken commands and the sort of full-blown recognition that Live Transcribe does, where the goal is to correctly interpret anything one person might say to another. At Google’s event—where it left Live Transcribe running to transcribe the presenters as they spoke—the app didn’t get every word right. But it was mostly spot on, and its mistakes were usually nitpicky stuff rather than glaring blunders. It also uses AI to grasp the context of phrases—so it knows the difference between “New Jersey” (the state) and “new jersey” (the shirt you just bought).Live Transcribe doesn’t have many features, and that’s kind of the point. Google considered adding more functionality—such as the ability to save transcripts, which would certainly make it handy for folks like journalists—but ultimately decided to focus on optimizing it for the sole purpose of assisting people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It uses haptic feedback to alert a user that someone has started talking, and allows those who can’t or don’t want to speak to participate in a conversation by typing. In the interest of privacy, it doesn’t store past transcriptions in the cloud.Sound Amplifier [Image: courtesy of Google]Along with Live Transcribe, Google is releasing a service called Sound Amplifier, which was announced at last year’s Google IO conference and is now arriving in the Play Store and preinstalled on Pixel 3 phones. Rather than turning speech into text, it’s designed to help people hear better in challenging situations, from restaurants to study halls to airport lounges.“You’re at a dinner party with your friends, and the environment is kind of loud,” said Google software engineer Ricardo Garcia by way of example during the accessibility event. “And sometimes you can hear the person right next to you just fine, but it’s difficult to hear someone across the table.” Sound Amplifier picks up sound using your Android phone’s microphones, dynamically processes it to boost quiet sounds and remove background noise, and lets you listen to the results through a pair of wired headphones. You can also adjust the audio in a variety of ways, such as fine-tuning it separately for your left and right ears.What Sound Amplifier does reminds me of a bit is Here One, the earbuds, from short-lived startup Doppler Labs, that aimed to intelligently filter out audio distractions and let you tweak their settings to your personal preferences and specific environments. But while Doppler’s idea was to build the technology into a sleek, AirPod-esque $300 set of wireless buds, Google wants to make it accessible to anyone with a pair of headphones and a phone capable of running Android Pie.Along with other journalists at Google’s event, I tried out Sound Amplifier by listening to it through a box that simulated hearing loss. But the day may well come when I don’t need a special box to gauge its effectiveness: One in three Americans over the age of 65 has hearing loss. Worldwide, says the World Health Organization, 466 million people are deaf or hard of hearing, a figure the WHO expects to grow to 900 million by 2055.Google is fond of emphasizing that it likes to build things to reach large swaths of humanity—and rather than catering to a niche, these two new apps have a potential audience that’s large and only growing larger.

As we take our seats for a screening of Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, the song of the same title from 1942: A Love Story, made in 1994 and starring a young Anil Kapoor, plays softly in the background. The room, full mostly of LGBTQ+ people, hum quietly along. Initially sung by a man about a woman he falls for, the song has been rebranded as a queer anthem for the new blockbuster Bollywood film of the same name. Roughly translated as “I felt something when I saw that girl”, it is now being sung joyfully by queer women around the world, with a sly smile.A lot of us felt uneasy walking in to the screening of the film. Bollywood relies heavily on sexism, homophobia and racism as the butt of its jokes, so there was an anticipation of disappointment. An older Anil Kapoor stars in this “unexpected romance” as the father of Sweety, played by Sonam Kapoor (the first time this real-life father and daughter have appeared in a film together). The jokes could be mirrored in our own families – so when we’re introduced to Sweety’s abusive brother (played by Abhishek Duhan), the only person who knows her secret, it’s no surprise to a lot of us. The forceful patriarchal ideology held by certain Indian communities has been the driving force of a lot of abuse endured by women. They would consider him “protective” – an old-fashioned term used in abusive relationships, that can be normalised in South Asian communities.One questionable aspect: at one point, in order to continue hiding her secret from the extended family, Sweety’s brother claims that she is in fact seeing a Muslim boy, Sahil (played by Rajkummar Rao), opening the film up to deep-seated Islamophobia in Indian communities. Reactions of shock fill the dining table as they attempt to come to terms with the concept of their Sikh daughter falling for a Muslim man. This plot device has been crafted to set up a reveal later in the film – but Muslims have been thrown under the bus for the sake of storytelling.Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga sets us up for a typical Bollywood romance – a woman’s worth is determined by her eligibility as a wife. In the first five minutes, during a wedding celebration, Sweety is asked when she’s going to get married and I can almost feel the collective eye-roll in the room. Most South Asian women have been asked that question by some bored auntie who spends her time assuming the role of matchmaker. We know the storyteller is on our side this time though, when Sweety rolls her eyes with us.We are then taken on a familiar narrative journey with Sweety, as she explains her story to Sahil. We meet her girlfriend and join their quest to normalise her life. Sahil takes on the role of the male saviour, telling us that homosexuality is acceptable only when it impacts heterosexuality. At the same time, though, we welcome an ally: in a world where these conversations aren’t had, every hetero man who wants to be a saviour is welcome.But by the end of the film, we’re all in tears. The queer people in the room have just watched their story told: not just a queer story, but a queer Indian story. It’s not the first ever – Fire, directed by Deepa Mehta, was released in 1996 – but it’s the first big mainstream Bollywood film that centres on a lesbian romance. It stars some of the biggest names in Bollywood – names that our families have uttered – and it helps make us feel that little bit more accepted. Not only has it reaffirmed our existence, it talks about the mental and physical abuse endured by some queer Indian people.After the screening, a few us huddle together, still wiping away tears and grinning widely. Our families will watch the moments they experienced with us on a big screen and it reaffirms our lives. Ek Ladki has helped us take a step further into the right direction. Topics Movies Bollywood Sexuality India LGBT rights South and Central Asia comment

About a year ago, a nonprofit called Locast quietly started streaming local broadcast channels such as ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC in New York City. It has since expanded to six other cities, and will probably get a lot more attention now that the operation has been profiled by The New York Times. Essentially, Locast relies on an exemption in copyright law that lets nonprofits retransmit broadcasts to the public. In other words, Locast appears to be legal, though it hasn’t been tested in court.So how do you actually watch Locast? It’s easy: If you’re on a computer, head to Locast.org and allow the site to access your location. Click “Live TV Guide” and find your city. You have to be in one of the supported markets, which currently include New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, and Denver. You’ll then see a channel lineup and programing guide that shows you what’s on TV and what’s coming up. Just click the show you want to watch, register for a new account (or sign in with Facebook), and you’re ready to start streaming. You can also watch Locast on your phone with its iOS and Android apps. As for TV support, Locast is currently available on Roku streaming players and smart TVs. The group has said it’s working on Fire TV and Apple TV apps, but they’re not available today. Caveat: Locast only offers live TV feeds, not DVR service. If you want to record local channels, you’ll have to pay for a live TV streaming service such as YouTube TV or DirecTV Now, or rig up your own over-the-air DVR with an antenna. Remember, the service is free, but Locast does take donations, as that’s the only way the service is funded.

Apple is more associated with splashy onstage events than any other tech company, and some of its keynotes have been—by product-marketing standards—historic. But the Apple event I’m obsessed with at the moment didn’t involve anyone unveiling a landmark gizmo, and was never meant to be seen by the general public. It’s Apple’s 1992 national sales meeting, which was held at the Grand Old Opry in Nashville.A company called Zink Communications (tagline: “dedicated to exceeding our customers’ expectations”) helped Apple stage the whole affair and produced a video about it to promote its event-planning services to other prospective customers. A couple of years ago, some generous person uploaded it to YouTube, where it’s racked up a total of 43 views.It deserves to be way more popular than that, and here it is.If you can spare six minutes to watch the video, you will experience: The meeting’s rockin’ theme song, “We Own the Zone” (sample lyrics: “People just want to be the best they can be/And you’ve got all the power/that’s so easy to see”) and the very 1992 computer graphics that accompanied it. Apple CEO John Sculley presenting Apple’s three-part business strategy and announcing, to rapturous applause, that Apple has the #1 market share in the world (presumably for computers). Lots of salesperson-motivating imagery such as jet airplanes taking off. A laser show and fireworks going off inside the Grand Old Opry. “The Fusion Zone,” an “all-day interactive learning environment” where Apple salespeople got to “test their knowledge and skills in a lively, competitive atmosphere.” Presentations from Taligent and Kaleida, two much-hyped software joint ventures between Apple and IBM that ended up going nowhere. A rousing speech (“you have the power to deliver this dream to the world!”) by Apple COO Michael Spindler, who (briefly) became CEO after Sculley was ousted in 1993. Plenty of attempted comedy, including “Apple’s Most Bodacious Home Videos” and sketches inspired by Star Trek and Gilligan’s Island. Glimpses of ’90s Apple products—mostly Macs, but also the Newton. Olympic medalist/motivational speaker Peter Vidmar inspiring the troops by performing a gymnastics routine onstage. Apple salespeople accepting giant trophies, chest-bumping each other, and generally doing the things that salespeople did in private at an event such as this—and still do to this day, I imagine. I lived through 1992–and was even a tech-journalism greenhorn at the time—but had forgotten how goofy the era’s vibe was until I watched this video. I won’t make fun of anything anybody is wearing in it, since I must have dressed similarly back then. Maybe worse.Thinking back to the 1990s from here in 2019, it’s easy to fixate on the business troubles that eventually brought Apple perilously close to insolvency, which prompted cofounder Steve Jobs to return, which … well, you know the rest of the story. But in 1992, the company was celebrating record revenue and profits; its swoon was still years away. So those salesfolk in Nashville must have had every reason to be proud of themselves and optimistic about the future.I’m glad they enjoyed themselves—and grateful that this video survived to capture the moment in time.

Look up as you walk around Surat and you might spot “HFL 8.8.2006” daubed in red paint on a wall above your head. HFL stands for “high flood level”, and the inscriptions are 15 feet above the ground in places – a fading memory of the devastating floods of August 2006, which killed 150 people, according to official estimates (unofficial counts put the death toll at over 500). More than 60% of the city was underwater and damage was estimated at $2bn.Surat’s geography – it lies at the mouth of the Tapi river, near the Arabian Sea – makes it prone to flooding, and it experiences a major inundation every four years on average.But that threat does not stop people moving here, drawn by the hope of work in Surat’s textile and diamond industries, and the population has soared from 2.4 million in 2001 to around 6.6 million today. The UN estimates the city will be home to 10 million people by 2032, making it India’s eighth megacity, after Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai and newcomers Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.Surat, known as the “diamond city”, faces a triple flooding threat: from the Tapi and the Ukai dam upstream, from the Arabian Sea, and from the 19 miles of creeks that spread through the city. It constructed its first flood wall in 1664, and the battle to hold back water has been raging ever since. Climate change has only exacerbated the situation.Ayesha Ansari is drying clothes near her one-room house beside the Mithi, one of six major creeks in Surat. She says her neighbourhood is submerged in knee-deep water most monsoons. “It is a nightmare, with the stinky sewage water gushing through the narrow lanes,” she says.Now the creeks are being remodelled. The sound of workmen welding metal rods for reinforced concrete banks reverberates through the tranquil afternoon. “A retaining wall will channel the flow,” says Maulik Rao, the official in charge of the scheme. “There will be a biodiversity park too, with a garden, a pool and a cycle track.”Some of the funding for the remodelling comes from Surat’s Smart City initiative, part of a national government scheme launched in 2015 in 100 cities. The city is spending around £300m on projects including the live-tracking of buses, new water treatment plants, solar and biogas generation, and automated LED street lights.The Tapi poses an even bigger risk. After floods in 1968 the government built the Ukai dam upstream with the aim of managing the flow of water to Surat while also generating hydroelectric power and irrigating farmland – but these different priorities are often in conflict, says Gopalakrishna Bhat, the chair of Taru Leading Edge, a consultancy and think tank.“The dam is supposed to generate power as well as control floods,” he says. “To generate more power you have to keep the water level as high as possible. To control floods, you have to keep a cushion, and not fill the dam fully. Dam managers struggle to manage these objectives.“Today, the dam has become the water source for many cities and industries. The pressure of maintaining maximum storage from the dam is far greater.”The expansion of the city is making matters worse. Since the last big floods in 2006, Surat’s geographical area has almost tripled to 326 sq km (126 sq miles).“The city used to exist only on one side of the river,” Bhat says, “but it is now expanding on both sides, and there is little flood plain left.”After the devastating floods of 2006, the municipal government set up an early warning system and started work building an embankment for the river. “The fire department does mock evacuation drills with schools and other institutions,” says the, municipal commissioner M Thennarasan. “Our website and mobile app have details of the water level in the Ukai dam. In case of an emergency, we can push warning messages to the people of Surat.”These measures were put to the test in 2013 when the early warning system predicted heavy rain when the dam was already full. “Because we had an early idea, we decided to deplete the dam two days before the rainfall was expected,” says Chaitanya Bhat, deputy municipal commissioner. “Otherwise the dam authorities would have been compelled to release water and the city would have been flooded.” Disaster was averted.But Gopalakrishna Bhat says Surat will only face ever bigger risks. In a 2013 paper he predicted the number of days with more than 200mm of rainfall would increase. “This would lead to the need for a greater number of emergency releases from the dam reservoir and increase the frequency and intensity of floods in Surat,” he says.“It is estimated that around 90% of Surat’s geographical area is affected by some type of climate hazard – whether flooding, coastal storms and cyclones or inundation associated with high tides and sea level rise. Much of the city and its surrounds are less than 10 metres above mean sea level.”The dangers are compounded by the rapid expansion of Hazira, a port 15 miles from Surat built on reclaimed sections of flood plain, which has triggered major hydrological changes. The port has effectively narrowed the mouth of the Tapi where it meets the sea. “The large-scale industrial development at the mouth of the river causes a rise in the water level immediately upstream,” Bhat’s paper noted.The city has reached the stage where it must accept that future floods are inevitable, Bhat says. “We have to learn to live with the floods, and manage them in a way so our life is not disturbed too much.” Topics Cities The next 15 megacities India South and Central Asia Flooding Natural disasters and extreme weather Smart cities features

This story has been updated.Facebook has been paying teens and adults to install a “social media research” app that monitors pretty much everything they do on their phones, an investigation by TechCrunch reported on Tuesday evening.The Facebook Research app, once installed through an app like Applause [Photo: Techcrunch]The privacy-challenged social network has been quietly recruiting users from 13 to 35 and asking them to install a “Facebook Research” app that—albeit with opt-in consent, and a legalistic disclaimer—bypasses typical security features on iOS and Android. The app is then capable of vacuuming up data on everything from their browsing history to their encrypted phone conversations and even their Amazon order history.On Wednesday morning, Apple said in a statement to Fast Company that it was revoking the developer certificates that Facebook relies upon for its internal apps, which had allowed its research app to gain unusual access to users’ iPhones.“We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization,” the company said. “Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”How “Project Atlas” worksSince 2016 Facebook has been quietly paying users $20 a month to use the app, as well as compensation for referrals.“The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe,” writes TechCrunch‘s Josh Constine.Facebook has essentially done an end-run around Apple’s App Store, which banned a Facebook VPN app called Onavo Protect last year that also gathered similar data. The app was heavily marketed by Facebook after it purchased the company in 2013, but it was later revealed that Onovo was also a tool for gathering business intelligence. The app helped Facebook collect crucial data on people’s use of WhatsApp that helped justify its 2014 acquisition of that company for $19 billion.The company apparently used digital ads offering people cash for participating in a “social media research” study. The sign-up pages for the studies make no mention of Facebook.Screenshot of a referral page for Project AtlasOnce downloaded through Applause or other beta-testing apps, the Facebook Research app asks the user to download and install a so-called Enterprise Developer Certificate that gives Facebook an unusual level of access to their phone.The developer certificate is intended, Apple says, only for distributing internal corporate apps; distributing such a certificate to non-Facebook employees violates the spirit of Apple’s developer rules.According to security researcher Will Strafach, Facebook renewed its developer certificate in July, weeks after Apple announced its more stringent set of App Store rules, which stipulated that apps “should not collect information about which other apps are installed on a user’s device.”In an emailed statement, a company spokesperson defended the project.“Key facts about this market research program are being ignored,” the statement said. “Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate. Finally, less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens. All of them with signed parental consent forms.”The privacy blunders just keep coming for Facebook, even as it prepares to consolidate its Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram apps to further optimize and coordinate the parts of its vast data collection machine. Meanwhile, lawmakers in states around the country and in Washington, D.C. are growing increasingly eager to pass laws that restrict how big tech companies can harvest and use personal data.Updated to include Facebook’s comment and Apple’s response.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar slid and equities surged on Wednesday, fueled by Boeing and Apple’s results and extended after the Federal Reserve pledged to be patient with future interest rate hikes, a change in tone that stock investors interpreted as a buy signal. A trader works at his desk at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, January 30, 2019. REUTERS/StaffThe Fed, in its policy statement at the end of a two-day meeting, struck the language from its December policy statement that indicated further rate hikes would be appropriate in 2019. That language had roiled markets amid signs of slower global growth. U.S. stocks extended gains and bond yields fell as markets got what they were hoping for, said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz in Newport Beach, California. “This marks a full 180 from what the Fed was signaling just a few months ago,” he said. Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners in Santa Monica, California, said the Fed’s pause will further extend the economic expansion, allowing excesses to continue to build and increasing risks of financial instability. “The Fed refilled the punch bowl and the party goes on. Buy risk assets,” Minerd said. The Fed’s policy statement indicates the U.S. central bank will remain on a dovish path, which is very supportive for risk assets, at least on the short term, said Putri Pascualy, managing director for PAAMCO in Irvine, California. “The back-drop of slowing economic growth on a global basis is the 800 trillion gorilla in the room,” Pascualy said. The MSCI world equity index, which tracks share performance in 47 countries, rose 1.2 percent following gains in Asia overnight. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading shares in Europe closed up 0.41 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 434.9 points, or 1.77 percent, to 25,014.86. The S&P 500 gained 41.05 points, or 1.55 percent, to 2,681.05, and the Nasdaq Composite added 154.79 points, or 2.2 percent, to 7,183.08. Upbeat results from Boeing and Apple late on Tuesday provided investors early relief. Boeing shares rose 6.25 percent after the world’s largest planemaker raised its profit and cash flow expectations for 2019 amid a boom in air travel. Boeing also indicated it had overcome supplier delays that snarled 737 production last year. Apple results provided some reassurance as the iPhone maker reported sharp growth in its services business. Its shares gained 6.83 percent Oil prices rose, paring gains of more than 1 percent, as the potential for supply disruptions following U.S. sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry lifted prices. Stocks listed in London jumped more than 1 percent after British lawmakers late on Tuesday rejected a proposal in Parliament that aimed to prevent a potentially chaotic “no-deal” Brexit, a vote that initially pushed sterling sharply lower. The exporter-heavy FTSE 100 in London rose 1.45 percent as its components often are boosted by a weaker pound because its multinational companies earn a large portion of their revenue abroad in foreign currency. Sterling rose 0.04 percent to $1.3071 after sliding about 0.7 percent against the dollar and the euro following parliamentary votes on Brexit. “The vote is not fundamentally changing the way the market’s talking about Brexit,” said Hetal Mehta, Legal & General Investment Management senior European economist. Payrolls processor ADP reported that the U.S. private sector added 213,000 jobs in January, which beat forecasts for gains of 178,000. But the monthly total was lower than the 271,000 jobs added in December. The dollar index fell 0.39 percent to 95.447. Against the yen, the dollar fell 0.33 percent to 109.02. FILE PHOTO - A woman using a smartphone is reflected on a stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, September 29, 2015. REUTERS/Issei KatoThe euro gained 0.39 percent to $1.1475. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes rose 6/32 in price to push yields down to 2.6900 percent. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 92 cents to settle at $54.23, while international Brent crude futures rose 33 cents to settle at $61.65 per barrel. Reporting by Herbert Lash; additional reporting by Jennifer Ablan; Editing by Will Dunham and Leslie AdlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Apple has agreed to pay 10 years of back taxes to France, marking the latest victory for European governments pushing tech multinationals to pay their fair share in local markets.The iPhone and iPad maker reportedly shelled out close to €500m (£440m) after reaching a confidential settlement with French authorities in December, according to the French news magazine L’Express.Apple has not disclosed the size of the settlement, but said in a statement: “The French tax authority recently concluded a multiyear audit of our French accounts and the adjustment will be reflected in our publicly filed accounts.“We know the important role tax payments play in society and we pay all that we owe according to tax laws and local customs wherever we operate.”American tech firms such as Apple have been heavily criticised for the small amounts of tax they pay in EU countries including France and the UK relative to the billions of pounds in sales they report in these states.The chancellor, Philip Hammond, recently announced plans to introduce a special digital services tax by 2020 on online firms making more than £500m globally per year. It’s expected that the tax would raise more than £400m annually for government coffers.France is also introducing its own “GAFA tax” – referring to Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon – which would affect tech companies with global sales of more than €750m and €25m in France. That law would be retroactive to 1 January and is expected to raise €500m this year.The country’s settlement with Apple follows a spate of successful challenges launched by European authorities over unpaid tax in recent years.Amazon also ended a protracted battle with France in 2018 after agreeing to pay the state €200m and saying it would start to declare all its earnings in the country. Topics Apple France Tax avoidance Tax and spending Europe Corporate governance news

发表时间 02-02-2019 • 更改时间 02-02-2019 发表时间 16:42 位于丝绸之路中途的中亚国家乌兹别克斯坦想要发展旅游业。从昨天周五起，塔什干当局给与几乎所有欧洲国家公民入境30天免签待遇 ... 本台法广RFI今天2019年2月2日周六的最新法文报道，除几乎所有欧洲国家之外，从昨天周五起享有这一免签待遇措施的还有澳大利亚ˎ 加拿大ˎ 智利ˎ 阿根廷等共45国公民。塔什干当局只要求上述国家公民在乌兹别克斯坦境内的逗留期限不超过30天

(Reuters) - Apple Inc reported sharp growth in its services business on Tuesday and Chief Executive Tim Cook said trade tensions between the United States and China were easing, helping boost the company’s shares after hours even though iPhone sales dipped in the holiday shopping quarter for the first time. Apple said sales for the current quarter would most likely be lower than Wall Street expected, a signal that it continues to face weak demand for the iPhone, especially in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. But investors focused on the company’s growing services, which include Apple Music and its App Store. “The services number is good, and that is the growth engine going forward that people will continue to focus on,” said Ivan Feinseth, an analyst with Tigress Financial Partners. Cook, who is in regular contact with U.S. President Donald Trump, said there were signs of a detente in trade tensions with China, which may have depressed sales of its phones. “If you were to graph up trade tension it’s clearly less in January than it was in December,” Cook told Reuters in an interview. “I’m optimistic that the two countries will be able to work things out.” The company’s shares rose 6 percent to $163.50 in after-hours trading. They had fallen more than 30 percent since November on concerns about weak iPhone sales and a general decline in high-tech stocks. Shares of iPhone suppliers including Micron Technology , Broadcom Inc and Skyworks Solutions rose more than 1 percent in extended trade after Apple’s report. “It appears that the bears pressed way too hard on the negative bets and even this more negative report couldn’t drive the stock lower,” said Hal Eddins, chief economist for Apple shareholder Capital Investment Counsel. Apple said revenue from services, which investors are counting on to fuel growth, reached $10.8 billion, in line with Wall Street estimates. Services gross margin hit 63 percent, up from 58.3 percent a year ago. Analysts previously estimated the services gross margin could top 60 percent. “They get more efficient as they get larger,” Cook told Reuters. The company said it has 360 million subscribers to both its own and third-party services, and set a goal to expand that to 500 million by the end of 2020. It said it has 1.4 billion active devices, an increase of 100 million from last year, and that 900 million of those are iPhones. Apple said it would start providing regular updates on the number of iPhones and overall devices in use - what is known in the tech industry as the installed base. The company stopped reporting unit sales of its iPhones the latest quarter. Apple counts both subscribers to its own services as well as Apple device users who subscribe to outside apps or services using Apple’s payment systems. Apple keeps up to 30 percent of the payments it handles. FILE PHOTO - People use their phones outside an Apple store in Beijing, China January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Apple’s iPhone revenue declined 15 percent year-over-year to $51.9 billion. Cook said China’s economic weakness hurt iPhone sales there. He said Apple is rethinking how it prices the iPhone outside the United States after largely setting the price in U.S. dollars, which made the phones more expensive in local currencies as the dollar strengthened. In markets with currencies that weakened considerably against the dollar over the last year, iPhone price “increases were obviously more,” Cook told Reuters. “And so as we’ve gotten into January and assessed the macroeconomic condition in some of those markets, we’ve decided to go back to more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago in hopes of helping the sales in those areas.” Apple said it expects revenue between $55 billion and $59 billion for the current quarter ending in March, largely below analysts’ average estimate of $58.83 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. For the quarter ending in December, the company’s busiest due to the holiday shopping season, Apple reported revenue of $84.3 billion, slightly above analysts’ average estimate of $84 billion. Apple warned in early January that sales would miss the targets it gave in November. Earnings per share were $4.18, compared with Wall Street’s average estimate of $4.17, according to Refinitiv data. Investors have been closely tracking the company’s share repurchase activity in hopes that it will help buoy the falling share price, which has knocked Apple off its throne as the world’s largest technology company with a market value of more than $1 trillion. FILE PHOTO - Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at Anti-Defamation League's "Never is Now" summit in New York City, New York, U.S., December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidApple said it bought back $8.2 billion worth of shares in the quarter ended in December, less than half the $19.4 billion it purchased in the quarter ended in September. Apple said its net cash position - cash minus its debt - was $130 billion, up from $123 billion in the previous quarter. Apple has publicly said it plans to draw its net cash position to zero. Some investors were disappointed Apple did not take advantage of low prices over the last quarter to buy back more stock. Ross Gerber, chief executive of Santa Monica, California-based Apple shareholder Gerber Kawasaki, said that Cook “is very annoying in this way” and was “just playing the game so safely.” “Tim just wants to be predictable and it seems to be working for now,” Gerber said. Reporting by Stephen Nellis and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicut in New York; Editing by Bill Rigbyand Leslie AdlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Reuters) - Apple Inc reported sharp growth in its services business on Tuesday and Chief Executive Tim Cook said trade tensions between the United States and China were easing, helping boost the company’s shares after hours even though iPhone sales dipped in the holiday shopping quarter for the first time. Apple said sales for the current quarter would most likely be lower than Wall Street expected, a signal that it continues to face weak demand for the iPhone, especially in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. But investors focused on the company’s growing services, which include Apple Music and its App Store. “The services number is good, and that is the growth engine going forward that people will continue to focus on,” said Ivan Feinseth, an analyst with Tigress Financial Partners. Cook, who is in regular contact with U.S. President Donald Trump, said there were signs of a detente in trade tensions with China, which may have depressed sales of its phones. “If you were to graph up trade tension it’s clearly less in January than it was in December,” Cook told Reuters in an interview. “I’m optimistic that the two countries will be able to work things out.” The company’s shares rose 6 percent to $163.50 in after-hours trading. They had fallen more than 30 percent since November on concerns about weak iPhone sales and a general decline in high-tech stocks. Shares of iPhone suppliers including Micron Technology , Broadcom Inc and Skyworks Solutions rose more than 1 percent in extended trade after Apple’s report. “It appears that the bears pressed way too hard on the negative bets and even this more negative report couldn’t drive the stock lower,” said Hal Eddins, chief economist for Apple shareholder Capital Investment Counsel. Apple said revenue from services, which investors are counting on to fuel growth, reached $10.8 billion, in line with Wall Street estimates. Services gross margin hit 63 percent, up from 58.3 percent a year ago. Analysts previously estimated the services gross margin could top 60 percent. “They get more efficient as they get larger,” Cook told Reuters. The company said it has 360 million subscribers to both its own and third-party services, and set a goal to expand that to 500 million by the end of 2020. It said it has 1.4 billion active devices, an increase of 100 million from last year, and that 900 million of those are iPhones. Apple said it would start providing regular updates on the number of iPhones and overall devices in use - what is known in the tech industry as the installed base. The company stopped reporting unit sales of its iPhones the latest quarter. Apple counts both subscribers to its own services as well as Apple device users who subscribe to outside apps or services using Apple’s payment systems. Apple keeps up to 30 percent of the payments it handles. FILE PHOTO - People use their phones outside an Apple store in Beijing, China January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Apple’s iPhone revenue declined 15 percent year-over-year to $51.9 billion. Cook said China’s economic weakness hurt iPhone sales there. He said Apple is rethinking how it prices the iPhone outside the United States after largely setting the price in U.S. dollars, which made the phones more expensive in local currencies as the dollar strengthened. In markets with currencies that weakened considerably against the dollar over the last year, iPhone price “increases were obviously more,” Cook told Reuters. “And so as we’ve gotten into January and assessed the macroeconomic condition in some of those markets, we’ve decided to go back to more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago in hopes of helping the sales in those areas.” Apple said it expects revenue between $55 billion and $59 billion for the current quarter ending in March, largely below analysts’ average estimate of $58.83 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. For the quarter ending in December, the company’s busiest due to the holiday shopping season, Apple reported revenue of $84.3 billion, slightly above analysts’ average estimate of $84 billion. Apple warned in early January that sales would miss the targets it gave in November. Earnings per share were $4.18, compared with Wall Street’s average estimate of $4.17, according to Refinitiv data. Investors have been closely tracking the company’s share repurchase activity in hopes that it will help buoy the falling share price, which has knocked Apple off its throne as the world’s largest technology company with a market value of more than $1 trillion. FILE PHOTO - Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at Anti-Defamation League's "Never is Now" summit in New York City, New York, U.S., December 3, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidApple said it bought back $8.2 billion worth of shares in the quarter ended in December, less than half the $19.4 billion it purchased in the quarter ended in September. Apple said its net cash position - cash minus its debt - was $130 billion, up from $123 billion in the previous quarter. Apple has publicly said it plans to draw its net cash position to zero. Some investors were disappointed Apple did not take advantage of low prices over the last quarter to buy back more stock. Ross Gerber, chief executive of Santa Monica, California-based Apple shareholder Gerber Kawasaki, said that Cook “is very annoying in this way” and was “just playing the game so safely.” “Tim just wants to be predictable and it seems to be working for now,” Gerber said. Reporting by Stephen Nellis and Sonam Rai in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicut in New York; Editing by Bill Rigbyand Leslie AdlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Enlarge this image Prime Minister Narendra Modi (center) attends the opening of the 106th Indian Science Congress at Lovely Professional University on last week in Jalandhar, India. Pardeep Pandit/Hindustan Times via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Pardeep Pandit/Hindustan Times via Getty Images Prime Minister Narendra Modi (center) attends the opening of the 106th Indian Science Congress at Lovely Professional University on last week in Jalandhar, India. Pardeep Pandit/Hindustan Times via Getty Images At this year's annual meeting of the Indian Science Congress from Jan. 3 to 7, senior research scientist Kannan Jegathala Krishnan dismissed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity as "a big blunder" and said Isaac Newton didn't really understand how gravity works. Nageswara Rao, a vice chancellor at Andhra University in South India, said that Ravana, a demon god with 10 heads, had 24 kinds of aircraft of varying sizes and capacities — and that India was making test-tube babies thousands of years ago. Dinosaurs were created by the Hindu god Brahma, said Ashu Khosla, a scientist with expertise in paleontology at Panjab University in the North Indian city of Chandigarh. Not exactly the kind of remarks you would expect at an event whose mission is to advance and further the cause of science, to stimulate discussion on scientific theories and to create an awareness of science-related issues, especially among children — and that is funded by the Indian government's Ministry of Science and Technology.Krishnan, Rao and Khosla were addressing a group of 5,000 children assembled from all over the country at the event's Children's Science Congress. Their lectures were posted on YouTube and reported widely by the press. The congress organizers were red-faced, and the scientific community in India was outraged. Many citizens tweeted their shock: The organizers of the conference were taken aback. "This is the 106th edition of the Science Congress," said the group's general secretary Premendu P. Mathur in an interview with NPR. "Since 1914, we've had so many meaningful conversations with children on science. We've hosted Nobel laureates from around the world, and yet the controversy overshadows the good when some people misuse our platform for personal and political gain." About 15,000 scientists from India and around the world attend the conference every year, said Ashok Saxena, a zoologist and a former president of the congress, in an interview with NPR. They are a part of the 50,000-strong Indian Science Congress. Invitations were sent to 250 scientists and researchers to speak at the various sessions of the annual event. Among the famous attendees this year were three Nobel laureates: Hungarian-born Israeli biochemist Avram Hershko, who won the prize for chemistry in 2004; British-born physicist Duncan M. Haldane, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2016; and German-born American Nobel laureate for medicine in 2013, Thomas Christian Südhof, Addressing the comments made during the children's event, Saxena said, "We never dreamed that some of them would spout such irrational ideas. They were invited to speak based on their science credentials." But this isn't the first time the Indian Science Congress has been mired in controversy. In 2016, Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan famously called the event "a circus" because of the way religious ideologies held sway over science and said he wouldn't attend another session.Many scientists believe that politics is the problem.The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, in 2014 meant that the ideals of the organization that it is closely linked with — a right-wing group called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — are now mainstream. The RSS believes in propagating Hindutva as a nationalist movement. The term refers to the effort to establish a Hindu way of life and glorifying Hindu beliefs.Twitter users mark this trend: Indian scientists have expressed their displeasure over the controversial comments."It makes me uncomfortable when pseudoscience statements are made from a platform like the Indian Science Congress," said Kushagra Agrawal, a research scholar in the department of chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. The idea of such events is to show the world India's scientific prowess, he said, "but it makes me wonder what impression those Nobel laureates and other foreign scientist dignitaries will take from our country." The principal scientific adviser to the prime minister, K. VijayRaghavan, wrote in a blog post that the "scientifically completely untenable" claims could cause harm if they were to find their way into public policy: "When lay people, including politicians, make random and untenable statements linking religion, culture, the past etc to science, the problem is to be addressed by collegial communication. When scientists make such links, they should be addressed more squarely." He calls the pseudoscientists "gorillas" in the room and blames them for hijacking real scientific conversations. But at this time, many scientists say, there is no evidence that this kind of pseudoscience has seeped into public policy just yet. Agrawal says he believes Indian bureaucracy has a staff of competent scientists who can advise and guide policymaking in the right direction. And Modi's comments at the congress have been well-received by the scientific community. The prime minister, who has tweeted that 2018 was a "great year" for science in India, expanded on this theme in his speech on Jan 4. He cited Scopus, an international database of research papers, as indicating that the country was among the Top 5 in terms of publishing scientific research. He urged Indians to focus on innovations and startups, especially in finding ways to increase agriculture produce through technology. The key achievements of Indian science this past year, he said, were expressed in such innovations as the production of aviation grade biofuel, a real-time landslide warning system that can help during flooding emergencies, a portable reading machine for the visually impaired and inexpensive devices for the quick diagnosis of cervical cancer, tuberculosis and dengue, diseases that affect millions in India.But Modi has not addressed the growing controversy over the many comments at this year's congress linking science and religion. For next year's event, organizers intend to vet speeches, especially those meant for children, said Mathur, the congress general secretary. "We've never censored scientists before. We expected them to motivate young minds and speak responsibly, but now, each session will have to be closely monitored. We won't allow others to use our platform for their selfish reasons anymore," he said. Kamala Thiagarajan is a freelance journalist based in Madurai, India, who has written for The International New York Times, BBC Travel and Forbes India. You can follow her @kamal_t.

The Reserve Bank of India yesterday (Jan. 08) announced the creation of a five-member committee to facilitate the “deepening of digital payments” in the country. For many, the committee’s composition reignited longstanding concerns.Two committee members drew the bulk of the criticism. First was its chairman, Nandan Nilekani—the architect of Aadhaar, India’s controversial biometric identity database. The second was Sanjay Jain, a former chief product manager of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the body that administers Aadhaar.Both Nilekani and Jain have ties to a small but powerful interest group: the Indian Software Product Industry Roundtable, or iSpirt—a lobby of volunteers, several of whom were once part of the UIDAI. iSpirt has been the primary promoter of India Stack, a clutch of software applications that underlie Aadhaar’s ecosystem. Nilekani was a mentor to iSpirt, and Jain is still a volunteer.“You have a regulatory committee that has undue representation from one set of players,” said Srikanth Lakshmanan, founder of Cashless Consumer, an educational initiative on digital payments.iSpirt has been controversial for years. Allegations of conflicts of interest have been rife, especially since several former UIDAI officials associated with the lobbying group have jumped to the private sector to profit from Aadhaar-related businesses. The group has also come under fire for its lobbying for data localisation.Earlier this week, digital outlet Asia Times published a leaked recording that suggested iSpirt members had early access to information about the policies the government would enact on Aadhaar.This, along with other controversies that have embroiled the organisation over the years, may be a sign that the committee is in less-than-neutral hands.In late September, India’s supreme court finally ruled on a long-pending challenge to Aadhaar, declaring that the programme was constitutional but in need of checks. One such check, a restriction on private companies asking for the identity number, upset many e-payments startups whose business models depended on Aadhaar.In the months since then, the central government seems to be trying to counteract the judgment by introducing legal amendments that, among other things, aim to legalise private use of Aadhaar again. These amendments were passed in India’s lower parliamentary house last week.Two days ago, Asia Times published a leaked tape of a conversation between three members of iSpirt, including Jain. In the recording, which was from an open-house discussion that iSpirt held days after the supreme court judgment, Jain refers to a blog post he’d just written arguing that the ruling had not, in fact, prohibited private use of Aadhaar. (He received immediate backlash, including from lawyers who argued that his interpretation was wrong.)Soon after in the recording, another person—reportedly iSpirt co-founder Sharad Sharma—says the reason iSpirt is “not pushing so hard” to prove their arguments about the judgment is because “we don’t want to rub it in” against the “group of people who’ve put seven, eight years fighting Aadhaar.” But, he adds, “this is where we think everything will end up: UIDAI will issue some circular, there is an ordinance in the works, and then an amendment to the law will happen. Please don’t tweet this, but that is what the process is.”Their words, spoken just days after the supreme court verdict, foreshadowed the actions the government took, months later.After Asia Times published the story, some said the recording suggested that iSpirt had prior knowledge from the government.iSpirt put out a blog post containing the emails that Saikat Datta, the Asia Times journalist, exchanged with Jain before the story was published. Jain’s final email says that instead of stating inside information, he and his associates at iSpirt were “trying to read the tea leaves so that we could inform the startup community, and also respond to the data protection bill appropriately.”In September 2017, technology news website The Ken reported that Jain, along with other former UIDAI officials, had launched Khosla Labs, which profits from Aadhaar-based authentication services. This, many argued, heavily suggested conflict of interest.In Jain’s final email to Datta, he denies there was any conflict of interest, since three years elapsed between his employment at the UIDAI and Khosla Labs, and there were no allegations of “undue favours” from the government.But the cloud of alleged cronyism has not lifted from iSpirt, especially since other former UIDAI members have entered Aadhaar-related markets too. One founder of OnGrid, an Aadhaar-based background check company, is ex-UIDAI, as were three founding directors of venture-capital fund AngelPrime.Other serious allegations also surfaced in the Ken article, which discusses the Unified Payments Interface (UPI)—an India Stack API through which users can transfer money between banks, and on top of which many digital payments companies have built apps. The article reports that one payments company, PhonePe, received “red carpet treatment from iSpirt” when UPI was launching, while other companies were left out in the cold.UPI is run by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), a private company owned by a consortium of Indian banks. Nilekani supposedly has immense influence over the body, despite not holding any office. The Wire reported last year that Nilekani might have forced the organisation to make his close associate Dilip Asbe its CEO over the candidate that the majority of its directors had chosen. The Caravan reported in May that, according to a source with knowledge of the Asbe affair, Nilekani “shadow runs” the NPCI.Amol Kulkarni, a fellow at CUTS International, a Jaipur-based think-tank focused on consumer trust, says he has “concerns with respect to potential conflict of interest and past association of members of the committee with select organisations.” But even more importantly, he said, the committee has no “representation of consumers, merchants and other key stakeholder groups which are likely to be severely impacted by recommendations” or any resultant policies.Last October, iSpirt drew sharp criticism from the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), which represents American companies like Visa and MasterCard, for its alleged lobbying for the RBI’s controversial data localisation policies.USISPF reportedly said that iSpirt “hijacked” a closed-door RBI meeting to “raise technological issues which needed a more detailed meeting with the right stakeholders.” The very presence of iSpirt at such meetings, USISPF said, “may constitute a conflict of interest, especially when they were asked by the RBI during the course of the meeting to provide technical expertise to companies on compliance to this directive.”Quartz has sent emails to Nilekani, Jain, Sharma, the UIDAI, and the RBI. This story will be updated as and when any of them replies.Lakshmanan of Cashless Consumer argued that the strong representation of iSpirt members on the digital payments committee could pose even greater problems. “Card players have already cried foul on data localisation,” he said. “And UPI is having an interest to capture the card market. Here you have two people who have associations with UPI, sitting on a Reserve Bank committee, envisioning the future of payments.”

It’s Day 20 of the government shutdown and, as he has since Day 1, Devon Russell is scrambling for extra income.It’s not that Russell doesn’t have a job. A union member, he works as a security officer at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, blocks from the White House where on Wednesday President Trump continued to angrily posture about the border wall and the intransigence of Senate Democrats. Under normal circumstances, Russell watches over millions of visitors who pass through the museum’s exhibition halls and its renowned collections of artifacts. Now, though, the border wall impasse has furloughed 800,000 federal employees, Russell among them. New Year’s was his last paid work day and he’s shaken, concerned about his girlfriend having to carry new financial burdens because he’s not being paid.“I just got my last check from my job,” he tells Fast Company. “Maybe the higher-ups or the people who don’t really pay attention don’t realize that these are Americans trying to support their families.” He adds, “It’s not only people not working, it’s less food on the table, it’s not being able to buy the essentials you need in your house. It’s maybe losing your car because you don’t have the money, it’s your credit being messed up.”Two hundred and thirty miles north, Keith Polite is similarly stressed. In his fourth year working security at the National Museum of the American Indian in Lower Manhattan, Polite says he’s worried about his future and that he might apply for unemployment benefits to help avoid dipping into his savings. “You’re walking on eggshells,” he says. “I’m not the type of person to call in sick, but I might have to use up my sick days.”Russell says he’d hoped Trump’s Oval Office speech on Tuesday night would include a clear strategy for reopening the government. “I thought Trump’s speech might shed some light, but…” He trails off.Russell and Polite are among 163,000 members of 32BJ SEIU, the country’s largest property service workers union. Active in nine states, it has 18,000 members in the D.C. Metropolitan Area and Baltimore. Unlike other furloughed federal workers, Russell and Polite are contract workers and aren’t guaranteed back pay once the shutdown ends.32BJ SEIU spokeswoman Julie Karant says that as in past shutdowns (including the Obama-era battle over raising the debt ceiling and preserving funding for the Affordable Care Act), it’s hard to predict if workers will ultimately receive back pay. “It was a mixed bag in the past and totally unpredictable this time. None of our custodians got back pay when the government shut down for two-to-three weeks in 2013.”One additional burden for furloughed workers worried about making tuition, car and mortgage payments? According to the Department of Labor, those who receive back pay when the government shutdown finally ends must repay the government the unemployment benefits that got them through it.“While the President and Senate Republicans struggle to get their act together, real people are suffering,” said Schatz in a statement. “Right now, thousands of federal workers and their families are struggling to pay rent and make ends meet. It’s absolutely unacceptable. Our bill will protect federal workers and make sure they aren’t harmed because of a political stunt.”Meanwhile, workers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) who perform a crucial security function to protect the country, have been working without pay since the first day of the shutdown. According to the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 700,000 federal and D.C. government workers, about 44,000 TSA workers in total service and screen 851 million passengers a year. Though legally prohibited from striking, there have been multiple reports in the last week of shutdown-related sickouts at the nation’s airports.The president says that he’d keep the government closed for “months or even years” to ensure funding for his wall. More recently, he suggested a willingness to declare a national emergency to get it done. Critics say both strategies reveal an indifference to working Americans like Devon Russell and Keith Polite.“Basically, Trump doesn’t care about anybody” says Russell, “not even the people who voted for him and support him. Those are the same people who are losing their jobs as well at this point. In order for this to end, people have to pick up the phone. Whatever it takes to try to get this thing done and over with.”

Dhanakosa, on the banks of beautiful Loch Voil, near Balquhidder in central Scotland, is truly a place to stop, breathe, unwind and take stock. Amid the glorious scenery, you eat delicious, healthy vegetarian meals (and can even take a recipe book home), do yoga, hill walk, learn to meditate or reinvigorate your practice and your life. It’s the perfect place to come if you just want some time out to reset yourself. I’ve come here for the weekend and for a week. They operate on the Buddhist principle of Dana or generosity. You pay the deposit of £75 (for a week) or £50 (weekend) and then from a suggested scale (from £285 to £445 for a week). It’s a magical place. • dhanakosa.com CarolannThe Mandala Ashram in south-west Wales calls itself a “home for seekers” – and it really lives its values, offering a screen-free, turmeric-rich environment with a rule of silence from 9pm to breakfast, after which you’re allocated a task to help the community function. You’re invited to use this work to meditate on the values of “right-living” – even when off your yoga mat. If you manage to shatter two glass shelves as you clean out the fridge – as I did – you are supported in reflecting on mindfulness. • Three-day retreat £235 full-board, mandalayogaashram.co.ukElizabeth GowingAfter a short but destructive relationship broke me I Googled “place to go when you are tired” and found Raw Horizons, near Thirsk in North Yorkshire. I spent five days and nights with five other women (all were there for different reasons) plus the life coach and her mum in their beautiful private house. While doing things I have never done before (guided meditation, daily yoga, collaging, goddess dancing and raw eating) I rediscovered my inner strength and mojo for life. Modern UK life is difficult, so I wish everyone had the opportunity to take time out like this.• From £1,195, rawhorizons.co.ukDeeMoniack Mhor, in the Highlands near Inverness, offers a five-day untutored writing retreat that had everything I needed. Peace, quiet, walks, sunsets, poetry library, whisky, fires, ghost stories, other writers and haggis. It’s brilliant value for money, and the staff are exceptional, giving you just the right support. I can honestly say it changed my life – I quit my job soon after I came back and am heading back to Scotland soon. • £350 for five days full-board, moniackmhor.org.ukKittyI spent four days at a lakeside yoga retreat in the wild forest of Bergslagen, a two-hour drive from Stockholm. The enchanting setting offers a nourishing immersion into Nordic nature, yoga and spirituality. From the moment I arrived, I went offline, replacing screen time with yoga, meditation, forest walks, wild swimming, kirtan (shared recitation) and journalling. Highlights included a floating wood-fired sauna and wholesome vegetarian meals, inspired by Ayurveda (holistic healing). Shambala is an invitation to step away from the humdrum of routine, to live in communion with nature and reconnect to self. • £500 for four-day retreat, shambalagatherings.comKate BullenGoing on the Kaliyoga retreat in Orgiva was the best decision I ever made. Twice a day we practised yoga in a space that opened on to the beautiful Andalucian countryside, in a group that ranged from complete yoga newbies to qualified teachers. When we weren’t perfecting our downward-facing dogs we were taken on guided walks in the breathtaking Alpujarras and ate delicious vegetarian food. We slept in tipis. Thank you Kaliyoga – what a week!• Week from £895 full-board, kaliyoga.comSarah BrodieMeditation at dawn as the first swifts scream through blue skies. Morning walks through cool cork forests into the Andalucian hills. Back in time for freshly cooked paella under the shade of the kitchen patio. A short siesta, and then time to put into writing the sheer joy and exhilaration of this new-found experience. It is run by the amazing Elaine Kingett, who guides, lovingly, words you didn’t know you could articulate. It’s held at a finca near Seville , where Sam, Jeannie and Charlie Chesterton make you feel like family. I’m still writing.• Week from £1,550 full-board including wine, cocktails, and local transport, write-it-down.co.uk JenniI went alone to Kopan Buddhist monastery, near Kathmandu, for two weeks to learn meditation and mindfulness but once there found myself among a hundred like-minded people from all over the world. We started early morning meditation with different meditation techniques. We had silence inner peace and happiness. I found my real self and it has empowered me to be able to control my mind. It cost only £85 for two weeks’ accommodation, all veggie-fantastic meals and meditation and mindfulness training by monks. Best experience of my life. • kopanmonastery.comCatherine McCauleyAmong a bewildering growth of dubious yoga retreats across India, the Meenakshi ashram, a short bus/rickshaw ride out of Madurai, is honest and peaceful. For about £47 a day, you get five hours of well-taught yoga, a clean bed and two simple vegetarian meals. Dawn meditation among a medley of cicada song and jasmine blossom provided a sense of peace I still often think about. Go with an open mind and a sense of humour. Throw yourself into the chanting, temple visits and enjoy some random lessons on life and the universe from a charismatic sadhu. I always smile when I remember my visit. • sivananda.org.in/maduraiBethThe Wonderland Healing Centre on the island of Kho Phangan offers yoga, meditation, detox, delicious fully vegan food and many alternative therapy treatments … it’s truly a wonderland! I spent seven nights here during a year-long backpacking trip around the world and didn’t want to leave. It completely rejuvenated me (I am much older than the average backpacker) and almost a year on I’m still drawing on stuff I learned there.• Week in a four-bed dorm £378 full-board, Wonderlandhc.comVal Topics Health and fitness holidays Readers' travel tips Rest and relaxation Learning holidays Yoga holidays Top 10s Yoga Meditation features

Indian companies are finally tapping into a digital goldmine: Social media influencers.“From celebrities to the rising class of micro-influencers—experts in a specific topic with smaller but more highly engaged audiences—influencers are emerging as a critical marketing tool for brands,” according to a new report by Gurugram-based influencer-marketing firm Buzzoka. “Influencers help brands grow awareness and consideration. Increasingly, they’re also helping drive sales.”For the research, the company surveyed over 500 brand custodians—including top ad agencies as well as startups—and content creators like bloggers, YouTubers, Twitter influencers and Instagram influencers.Over half the respondents said the biggest draw to invest in influencer marketing is “better reach and engagement.”In fact, now spreading word-of-mouth through influencers is considered a more lucrative option than organic search and even paid marketing.In 2018, most companies spent between 5% and 7% of their overall marketing budgets on online influencers. This year, 73% of firms plan to increase the share of spending on influencer marketing.An upside of using influencers to market a brand is that it is not time-consuming like most other modes of advertising. Most respondents spend less than 10 hours on a campaign.Instagram was the top choice in influencer marketing among Indian companies in 2018, Buzzoka revealed.The photo-sharing site will continue to reign in 2019 with 69% of respondents listing it as the top platform they will bet on this year. LinkedIn (8%) and TikTok (8%) are the second-most preferred options.For Indian companies, quality is more important than the reach of an influencer. Content quality is the top criteria that companies consider before bringing an influencer on board.In addition, models and movie stars aren’t the only ones brands are courting. Over eight in 10 survey respondents said the role of commoners is “important” or “extremely important.” These are ordinary citizens who’ve built up an online fan-following of thousands and in some cases millions of people.For instance, 25-year-old YouTuber Prajakta Koliwa, who has more than 21 million subscribers on her channel “mostlysane,” was signed up as the face of H&M India’s online store. She also tied up with Yatra.com to create relatable content about travel and collaborates with Samsung often. Recently, she even appeared in a television commercial for WhatsApp late last year because she had previously spoken about fake news on her channel.These online personalities are raking in big bucks.Somya Gupta, an Instagram celebrity with over 500,000 followers at the age of 21, earns almost Rs200,000 each month from advertising for over 50 brands including Calvin Klein, Loreal, Lakme, Garnier, Maybelline and One Plus. Fashion blogger Aashna Shroff earns between Rs5 lakh and Rs10 lakh monthly just from her Instagram posts.Nano-influencers, whose follower counts are in the low thousands, are another breed of online celebrity that is sought-after because when they market a product to their small audience, the recommendation almost seems like it came from a friend. And these people also don’t encash huge cheques. Often, they’ll advertise in exchange for free products or experiences—the most preferred method of payment among Indian firms.Despite the apparent promise of social media marketing, brands are taking things slowly.Players in the ecosystem are still conservative because this mode of advertising is still nascent. On average, over two-thirds of branding companies spend $50,000 on influencer campaigns per year per brand.The biggest roadblock is that brands are still struggling with figuring out the return on investment from influencer marketing–the top concern listed by 46% of brand experts. The flooding of fake followers across these platforms make it hard to assess the real impact of influencers.

The first time Meek Mill took part in a rap battle, he left in tears. “The guy battling me was 16 years old, and I was 13 or 14 – he was more advanced than me,” the 31-year-old recalls. “I lost by a long shot, but it gave me ambition. I told everybody before I left: ‘One day, you all will be playing my music.’” Hours before we sit down to chat in a ritzy Manhattan restaurant, the rapper’s fourth proper studio album, Championships, goes into the US charts at No 1. It is his second chart-topping record, after Dreams Worth More Than Money in 2015.As he sips camomile tea with a side order of raw ginger, Meek – real name Robert Rihmeek Williams – carefully unlocks a giant, diamond-studded chain, and places it on the table with the care of Indiana Jones swapping idols in Raiders of the Lost Ark. “I’m sick as hell right now,” he croaks between sips. His whirlwind schedule doesn’t allow for much rest; he’ll be whisked across town to tape an appearance on The Daily Show after our conversation and has just come from the set of a film about urban dirt-bike riders, 12 O’Clock Boys. It’s his acting debut, portraying a character who “[reflects] on myself – someone who’s been in prison and comes home and tries to change his life”.The release of Championships should be a triumphant moment for Meek. His strongest record yet, it pairs Meek’s penchant for full-throated intensity with glossy, cavernous beats. With its big-deal guest appearances, it has already made headlines, from speculation about whether Jay-Z’s pointed lines on What’s Free address Kanye West’s newfound Donald Trump fanaticism, to Meek’s team-up with his one-time rival Drake on Going Bad. “I think it’s healthy when it’s competition – it’s our job,” Meek says, stating that any bad blood between him and Drake is now firmly in the past. “Jay wasn’t talking to Kanye – he was talking to whoever was influencing Kanye. I never viewed that as a diss when I put it on my record.”The album arrives at a time when public goodwill towards Meek has never been stronger. “Getting support from the people is always a great feeling,” he says. He has needed it over the past 18 months. His history of legal troubles, culminating in a five-month jail stint last year, can be traced back to his upbringing in north Philadelphia, where his family moved following the death of his father when Meek was five.“Growing up in the rough neighbourhoods in America is all the same – coming up around drugs, violence, murder,” he says. “The police are there, but not to the level of protection. Coming up in a ruthless environment as a kid, you learn from what you see.” He relied on female role models, from his sister and mother to the music of Deborah Cox and Lauryn Hill. “It made me look at women as stronger,” he says. “My mom did everything for us – I’ve always viewed her as a man and a woman, all in one. It made me think all women were extremely strong and manly.”His uncle, the Philadelphia-based DJ Grandmaster Nell, played hip-hop records for Meek at his grandmother’s house, and Meek developed his distinctive flow – imagine a sentient air horn, or a boxing announcer’s theatrical timbre turned up to the max. “If you were to walk out [of] here and someone drove by half a block away, playing my music loud, you could still hear my voice,” he claims, citing Jay-Z’s protege Memphis Bleek as a formative influence.Throughout his adolescence, scuffles with police were a constant. Meek estimates that by the age of 18 he had been arrested 10 times for charges that didn’t stick. Then, in January 2007, he was arrested for illegal gun possession – and his decade-long legal troubles began. “I was carrying a gun because I felt I needed it to survive,” he says. “Even if you put me back in that situation right now, I’d still carry that gun. People like me die on a daily basis.” When the cops approached him in south-west Philadelphia, Meek claims, he tossed the gun to the ground and lay on the ground, preparing for arrest; the arresting officer, Reginald Graham, maintains that Meek instead pointed the gun directly at him. “From there on in, it was lights out,” Meek alleges. “I was getting knocked out.“I was prepared to face the consequences,” Meek says of the gun charge, but the cops also charged him with drug dealing and assaulting a police officer. The guilty verdict led to a one-year prison sentence and 10 years’ probation. Prison conditions – showering amid excrement-smeared walls, washing his underwear in the sink, navigating soap shortages – stay with Meek. “It was a big transition,” he says. “I had to adapt.”To this day, he contests the dealing and assault charges, and he’s not alone; in March last year, Philadelphia’s district attorney cast doubt on Graham’s original report. “In the ghettoes of America, if you’re a young man pointing a gun at a cop, you’re dead,” is Meek’s comment on the accusation. “Police officers will tell you: ‘We’re trained to kill you if you threaten our lives.’ That’s normal.”When the judge Genece Brinkley was assigned to preside over his probation, Meek hoped she would show a measure of sympathy for his situation: “She’s a black judge. She comes from my neighbourhood.”After a brief dalliance with TI’s Grand Hustle label, Meek linked up with the Miami rapper Rick Ross’s Maybach Music Group, but his rise to stardom was interrupted by legal difficulties. After a party celebrating the release of Meek’s 2012 debut, Dreams and Nightmares, he was briefly detained by police after a car he was riding in was pulled over (no charges were filed). “It always felt to me that, as I got bigger, things got worse,” he says.As the years passed, it became increasingly clear that Brinkley was not the sympathetic figure that Meek had hoped for. The probation officer she assigned to him would allegedly phone at 6am every day, demanding to know his every move, even though he wasn’t under house arrest; in 2013, Brinkley ordered him to attend etiquette classes because of his perceived rudeness during court proceedings. The judge would apparently show up to his court-ordered community service unannounced, and, during a private meeting with Meek and his then-girlfriend Nicki Minaj in 2016, allegedly asked him to record a cover of Philadelphia R&B legends Boyz II Men’s track On Bended Knee and dedicate a lyric to her. “I didn’t want to laugh in her face – she had my life in her hands,” Meek says. “Jay-Z said: ‘If I hadn’t sent nobody to court to see what was going on with you, I would’ve never believed what you were saying – it sounded too outrageous.’”That same year, his present probation officer recommended a six-month stay in rehab to help Meek deal with the “on-and-off” Percocet addiction he had developed while dealing with the pressure of regular court appearances. “The last time I took it was in 2016 – right before I went to court – because I was so nervous,” he says. The treatment worked, but in November 2017 Brinkley cited the failed drug test that prompted the treatment – as well as assault charges that were later dropped – while sentencing Meek to two to four years in prison for breaking his parole.He went back to jail, spending most of it in solitary confinement because of his celebrity. It was “hell on earth”, he says. “I was going crazy – I could only wash every four days, I was depressed from facing two to four years. They put me on the block with crazy people. When my lawyer came to see me, I said: ‘Did I lose my mind?’”While Meek was isolated from the outside world, fans were rallying in his support, from protests on the streets of Philadelphia to big-name supporters ranging from Jay-Z to the basketball player Joel Embiid. During the 2018 Winter Olympics, the Slovenian snowboarder Tit Stante appeared on television with “Free Meek Mill” written on the tip of his board. “It was shocking to me,” Meek says. “When you grow up in a wild environment, you don’t get support, so that was big for me.”Released on bail in April 2018, after the Pennsylvania supreme court overturned his 2017 sentence, Meek called for the criminal justice system to be reformed. When he was invited to Trump’s White House, however, he said no. “It was too risky – I didn’t want to attach myself to that.”He remains vocal about everything from probation and bail to who ends up in prison and what they must endure there. “I could piss in an alleyway out here, and a cop could pull over and lock me up with killers,” he says. “They got guys with DUIs in there alongside real rapists and gangsters. The system places you in a fuckin’ ruthless environment, where people are getting raped and stabbed – and they’re never the same when they come out.”But while Meek’s legal team continues to file appeals to have Brinkley removed from his case, to put an end to his probation, and to overturn his original 2008 conviction, he has no intention of becoming a full-time activist. “I don’t want to become the face of [reform] because I’m not a perfect person,” he says. “I want to be a good father [he has two children, Rihmeek and Murad, with his former girlfriend Fahimah Raheem], make a lot of money and help bring change if I could. I’m always attached to my neighbourhood.”But the shadow of the legal system still looms large. “I always hear rumours of groups of law enforcement investigating me, watching over me,” he says. “That always puts fear in my heart. I tell my friends – even the most powerful ones – always to stand behind me because there are always people out there who want to show me as someone I’m not. It scares me.” Topics Rap Hip-hop Law (US) Jay-Z features

The night-time cold in New Delhi is biting. As the temperature plunges, Alam Ansari’s twin daughters, born prematurely, have only their parents’ body heat to keep them warm while they huddle in a crowded tent on the road outside the capital’s top hospital.They are not alone. Each day, about 8,000 people from across the country queue outside the outpatients department for treatment. Mainly from poorer backgrounds, they sleep in tents or on the ground.Ansari is rocking one of his three-month-old daughters. Something is wrong with both girls’ eyes, but he doesn’t know what. The family travelled to the All India Institute of Medical Science – known simply as AIIMS – after doctors in Bihar told them they were unable to offer treatment.The train from their remote village to India’s capital took two days. A construction worker, Ansari borrowed 40,000 rupees. “That’s down to 5,000 rupees after being here two months. Every day we’re sent here and there, from one doctor to another. I don’t know what to do when my money runs out but I have to get my daughters well,” he says.Amid the turmoil, the girls have yet to be named.AIIMS runs a shelter for patients from out of town, but it is packed. Ansari and his family are lucky to have found space in one of the temporary tents erected outside by the Delhi government at the start of winter to give sick patients a place to wait for appointments, test results, and treatment.Inside, more than 100 people are wrapped in multi-coloured blankets in the gloom. They are mostly two to a bed; many are very sick and weak, having inhabited tents or lived on pavements outside the hospital for weeks, if not months.Millions of Indians find state hospitals are unable to help when they are seriously ill, leaving them no choice but to travel to New Delhi. AIIMS now operates in seven other states, but doctors at the hospitals outside New Delhi often lack specialist expertise. Patients are almost invariably referred to the capital.The institute offers free consultations and some tests, although payment is still required for drugs.Often, people who come for treatment cannot afford to rent a room. Waiting for an appointment or follow-up consultation is too expensive, travelling to and fro too exhausting.So they stay on, sleeping, eating and living on the pavement, under trees and flyovers, in the metro subway, under bus shelters, and on the floor of public toilets.Chandi Devi, who spent three weeks sleeping in the metro subway before finding space in a tent, looks exhausted and downcast. “My father needs both his knee joints replaced. He can’t walk. I have to ask others to help me take him to the toilet,” says Devi, who has left behind her three young children to bring her father to AIIMs. He remains silent throughout, his single nylon blanket offering scant protection from the daytime chill, much less the night.Patients like Devi’s father get hot meals provided by NGOs. They use public toilets and buy bottled water. Clothes are washed and hung out to dry on the iron railings lining the busy road outside the hospital.Space under a footbridge is much sought after. The more fortunate manage to get a bed in shelters run by charities and religious trusts, but need far exceeds supply.“One day it’s go to this doctor, another day it’s go to another doctor. It’s endless. It’s been a month and they haven’t even started treatment because they say they haven’t got any beds,” says Devi.In the next bed is a mother with her son. He looks about seven years old, but she says he is 18 and has a “growth problem”. Beside her are a couple with a daughter who has mental health problems.Outside the tent, Shalini has been on the pavement for six months with her husband, who is paralysed. In the space under a footbridge, she has created a little “room” for her belongings, clothes and a few pots and pans.Atul Sethi is here with her father. “His kidneys have failed,” she says, pointing to an emaciated figure on the ground, shrouded from head to toe in a white sheet. “He can’t stand. We came four days ago from Madhya Pradesh and are still waiting to see a doctor.”Nearby, three-year-old Neelu, from a remote village in Jharkhand, is playing on the pavement by the government tents. Her “accommodation” is a makeshift bed erected on the road by her mother, Chunni Birhor. “I can’t sleep alongside so many people. The tent makes me feel claustrophobic, so I prefer to stay on the path with my daughter,” says Birhor.Neelu smiles and scampers around. She looks healthy but Birhor says her daughter has blood cancer and will need to start treatment the moment a bed becomes available. Today is a good day. Often, Neelu doesn’t even feel like getting up.Mother and daughter have been on the pavement for a fortnight. Neelu’s father, a mason from Madhopur in Uttar Pradesh, has gone to the chemist to buy his daughter some drugs. “We’re spending without earning. Every day is a day’s wages lost,” says Birhor, whose daughter is one of many children suffering from cancer who can be found outside AIIMS. By 6pm it is dark and the temperature dips. It’s the rush hour and road next to the hospital is humming with traffic. The air is thick with smelly pollutants that sting the eyes.Back at the tent, one of Ansari’s girls starts to cry. His wife takes her and starts to breastfeed. Even now, after two months living in a tent in the freezing cold trying to save the lives of his two infants,Ansari looks puzzled at his circumstances. “I thought that AIIMS, being the top hospital, would have made some ‘bandobast’ [arrangements]…”Then he trailis off, sensing the futility of saying anything more. Topics Global health India South and Central Asia features

In Cuba, internet access is limited. But if you can’t get to the internet, there are ways of bringing it physically to you.It’s known as “el paquete semanal” or “the weekly packet”, an external drive loaded with thousands of hours of media content that is delivered to customers by enterprising ‘suppliers’ like Alberto Jorge.“With el paquete you choose what to watch and when to watch it,” says Jorge, 34, as he walks the cracked paving slabs of west Havana delivering the drives. Dubbed Cuba’s version of Netflix, it’s a form of offline internet that sidesteps censorship in state media, and connectivity issues, that are due in part to the US embargo. This week’s edition features showbiz news from Spain, Big Brother from the US, and an episode of Celebrity Masterchef broadcast just days earlier on BBC One.Alberto hands a one-terabyte drive to each household to copy, before returning the next day to collect it. He charges the equivalent of two US dollars a week for the service.Upon connecting the hard disk, subscribers are presented with more than 50 folders. There are Spanish-language editions of magazines such as Forbes and GQ, scanned in pdf format, apps that users can copy to their phones, and a file giving offline access to “Revolico”, the island’s main classified website which is intermittently blocked online.While tolerated by the authorities, it is unclear who heads up this hazy enterprise. Rumour has it that a network of entrepreneurs pay database administrators to download content using fast internet connections in their state jobs.On the other side of Havana, Elena Llera, 52, plugs a memory stick with The Bride of Istanbul, a Turkish soap opera, into her television. El paquete is now her main source of home entertainment, and she only switches to state TV for the evening news.Despite having a public wifi park just 100 metres from her apartment – one of more than 700 to have opened since 2015 – she connects only twice a week to video call her aunt in Miami. It costs the equivalent of one dollar an hour to use the internet, around the same as a day’s wage.“If I could, then I’d use the internet for all its functions, to learn about politics and culture. But I can’t. It’s very expensive,” she says.Alejandro Pol, 28, a dentist visiting Elena’s flatmate, uses el paquete to watch Vice News and reviews of the latest iPhones.“We know it doesn’t work like this in the capitalist world,” he says, “but it’s a way we have of staying connected.”