Civil Snippets

India, Maldives to ease visa norms from March 11 #GS2 #IR

* If a child from Maldives is being educated in India, his/ her entire family will get dependent visas.

* For Indian professionals applying for employment visa in the island country, the employers will pay the
fees and will get the paperwork done within 15 days.

These are part of the visa liberalisation between India and Maldives, which will come into effect from
March 11. Officials from both countries exchanged “diplomatic notes” for implementation of the visa
facilitation agreement, signed during Maldives President Ibrahim Solih’s visit to India on December 17
last year.

For Maldives, India is a preferred destination for education, medical treatment, recreation and business.
The number of Maldivians seeking long term visas for pursuing higher studies and medical treatment
has shown a sharp increase over the last two years.

Sources said that many send their children to study in India, mostly in and around Thiruvananthapuram
and Bengaluru. Earlier, parents who wanted to stay in these places while their children studied could not
do so, since India did not grant them dependent visas.

This meant that parents would have to come on a tourist visa, return to Maldives before the 90-day
period expired, and then apply for visas again.

“Now, they will be given dependent visas and can stay here for the duration of the child’s education.
The dependent visa can be availed not only by parents, but also siblings of the child and grandparents as
well,” said a source.
Similarly, those seeking medical consultation in India would earlier come on a tourist visa-on-arrival. If,
after consulting a doctor, they needed to stay back for medical treatment, they could not convert these
tourist visas into medical visas.

So, they would go back to Maldives and re-apply for medical visas. “Now, that conversion has been
allowed in India, and they can bring attendants as well,” said the source.

For Indian professionals and workers, their work permits or employment visas were not getting cleared
on a regular basis earlier. “Now, with the liberalisation, the prospective employer in Maldives will have
to do the paperwork, pay the fees and it will be done in 15 days, either way.

The Indian professionals won’t have to pay the fees here and wait indefinitely for the permit. The
Maldives authorities will take a decision within 15 days,” said the source.

Earlier, Indian businessmen had to apply for separate business visas, for which they needed letters of
invitation from a businessman in Maldives. “Now, they can go and do business on the visa-on-arrival in
Maldives,” the source said.

Indians are the second largest expatriate community in the Maldives, numbering about 22,000.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-maldives-to-ease-visa-norms-from-march-11-5581049/

Panic buttons: First phase of 112 emergency service to be launched on February

19 #GS3 #SnT

The first phase of all-India launch of the Emergency Response Support System (ERSS), which can be
accessed through panic buttons in mobile phones, will start from February 19.

The project is meant for those in distress, mainly women, so that they can send out distress signals
along with their location details to the nearest police control room, by pressing a button in their mobile
phones.

The project for a pan-India emergency number 112 linked to emergency support services will be
launched jointly by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Women & Child Development
(WCD) in a few states next week. The project is being financed using Rs 321.69 crore from the Nirbhaya
Fund scheme.

It allows users to dial 112 or use the ‘112 India’ app or use the designated panic button on their phones
to connect to a single number based emergency services which is linked to police, fire services, health
services and other helplines. There will one such emergency response centre in every state and
additional district level command centres.

The much-delayed project had seen the Department of Telecommunications issuing a gazette
notification on “Panic Button and Global Positioning System in Mobile Phone Handsets Rules 2016” in
April 2016, requiring installation of panic buttons in all new mobile phones handsets within a year.
Accordingly, feature phones were to have the panic button configured to the numeric key 5 or 9 and all
smartphones were to have a designated panic button configured to pressing the on-off button thrice.

“Initially, the plan was to allow women to send SMS alerts to family members. Later it was thought to be
an insufficient response, and therefore it was important to link it to police control rooms,” said a WCD
official.

However the project hit several snags since then, including how to ensure GPS location tracking on
regular feature phones.

The project, along with emergency response vehicles fitted with mobile device terminals, has so far
been launched only in Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland in November-December 2018. Trial runs were
carried out in Uttar Pradesh but an official launch is yet to happen in the state.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/panic-buttons-first-phase-of-112-emergency-service-to-be-
launched-on-february-19-5580910/

India, China lead global greening effort: study #GS2 #IR

India and China are leading the global greening effort, which is quite contrary to the general perception
worldwide, a study based on NASA satellite data has said, observing that the world is a greener place
than it was 20 years ago.

China and India account for one-third of the greening but contain only 9% of the planet’s land area
covered in vegetation. That is a surprising finding, considering the general notion of land degradation in
populous countries from over exploitation.

The study published on February 11, in the journal Nature Sustainability said that satellite data (2000 –
2017) revealed a greening pattern strikingly prominent in China and India and overlapping with
croplands worldwide.

China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated
area.

The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India it is mostly from croplands
(82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%), the study said.

China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating
land degradation, air pollution and climate change.

Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in
harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertiliser use and surface or groundwater
irrigation.

Many factors
When the greening of the earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate
and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The study was made possible thanks to a two-decade-long data record from the Moderate Resolution
Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. Now with the
MODIS data, we see that humans are also contributing.

The study says that the greening trend may change in the future depending on various factors. For
example, increased food production in India is facilitated by groundwater irrigation. As the groundwater
is depleted, the trend may change.

The researchers also pointed out that the gain in greenness around the world does not necessarily offset
the loss of natural vegetation in tropical regions such as Brazil and Indonesia.

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/india-china-lead-global-greening-effort-
study/article26252190.ece

U.S. court ruling takes Dr. Reddy’s closer to resuming sales of Indivior’s
Suboxone #GS3 #SnT

Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories moved one step closer to resuming sales of its generic version of Indivior’s
opioid dependence treatment drug Suboxone with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
(CAFC) turning down the British drug maker’s plea to stay issuance of the mandate in a case between
the two companies.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [has] denied Indivior’s motion to stay issuance of the
mandate following the CAFC’s ruling vacating the preliminary injunction granted against Dr. Reddy’s
Laboratories.

The preliminary injunction (PI) was granted in a patent case pertaining to Suboxone. On February 11,
while denying Indivior’s motion for a stay, the court also ordered that the mandate be issued on
February 19.

Post the court ruling, vacating the PI, Indivior’s had filed a motion for rehearing en banc, which too was
denied by the court earlier this month. The issue of the mandate is important as it is a formal filing by
which the CAFC returns the case to the district court for action consistent with its ruling.

Once the mandate is issued, Dr.Reddy’s Laboratories as well as Alvogen Pine Brook LLC, which also has a
generic version of Suboxone, “will no longer be prevented from selling, offering to sell or importing their
generic buprenorphine/naloxone sublingual film product.” Stating this, Indivior said it assumed DRL and
Alvogen would launch their respective generic version as soon as CAFC issued the mandate.

Any DRL and Alvogen generic product sales in the U.S., however, would be on an “at-risk” basis, subject
to the outcome of court cases pertaining to the patents related to Suboxone.
Indivior had earlier said the launch in the U.S. of a generic product that could be directly substituted by a
pharmacist for the branded product without consultation with the patient would result Suboxone losing
up to 80% of its market share within a matter of months.

Dr.Reddy’s shares gained 1.17% or ₹30.55 apiece to close at ₹2,647.50 each. It touched an intra-day high
of ₹2,674.40. The Hyderabad-headquartered pharma major, however, was yet to issue a statement in
the matter pertaining to court decision in Suboxone case.

https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/drl-inches-closer/article26249195.ece

India, Maldives reverse visa standoff ##GS2 #IR

India and Maldives exchanged an agreement to facilitate visas for travel between the two countries in a
number of categories, easing a bilateral standoff which had resulted in thousands of Indian job seekers
being denied work permits last year.

“This Agreement provides a very liberal visa regime for Maldivian nationals to visit India for tourism,
business, education & medical purposes. It also makes it easier for Indians to travel to Maldives for
business purposes,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in a statement, announcing the exchange
of diplomatic notes for the implementation of the “Visa Facilitation Agreement”.

The agreement was signed in December of last year during the visit of Maldives President Ibu Solih.

Under the agreement, the government will free up the visa regime for Maldives citizens who travel to
India for medical reasons and for education in particular. This will include allowing Maldives citizens who
receive a visa on arrival in India to change their visa status to medical visas if they require hospitalisation
during their stay.

For attendants

Medical visas will also be granted to attendants to accompany patients. The government has also agreed
to grant visas for parents and other dependants to live in India while their children attend school here.
The facilitation has been a long pending demand of the Maldives government, given the difficulties
faced by thousands of short term visa applicants each year.

The agreement will ease visas on arrival for Indian businessmen, and bring cheer to Indians applying for
work in the Maldives, as it stipulates that work permits will be issued within 15 days to Indian
employees, and the visa fees will be paid by employers in the Maldives.

In another sign of the improving ties, the Maldives cabinet passed a mutual legal assistance treaty
(MLAT) to be signed with India. The MLAT or extradition treaty will have to be ratified by the Maldives
Parliament Majlis before being signed by the two countries.

Last year, former Maldives President Abdulla Yameen had cited the problems faced by citizens as a
reason to clamp down on visas to Indian expatriates. Between February and September 2018, the
Yameen government imposed a virtual visa freeze on Indians who had been chosen for jobs in the
Maldives.

More than 2,000 applicants had been left in difficult circumstances as a result of the move, with many
jobs at hotel resorts, hospitals, schools and colleges being advertised for “non-Indians only”.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/india-maldives-reverse-visa-stand-off/article26252181.ece

India inks deal with US firm for 72,400 assault rifles #GS3 #Defence

India finally inked the Rs 647 crore contract for 72,400 new assault rifles for its frontline infantry soldiers
from the US under the fast-track procurement (FTP) route, in the first such procurement after well over
a decade.

The 7.62x51mm rifles from SiG Sauer, with a longer “kill range”, will be delivered within a year to
replace the existing glitch-prone 5.56mm INSAS (Indian small arms system) rifles. “The new rifles are
compact, robust, modern in technology and simple to maintain in field conditions,” said an official.

the assault rifles contract was set to be inked, while another FTP case for 93,895 close-quarter battle
(CQB) carbines from UAE company Caracal was also in the pipeline. The FTP route is only for limited
numbers of weapons due to critical operational necessity.

The overall requirement of the armed forces, primarily the 13-lakh strong Army, is for 8.16 lakh new
7.62mm caliber assault rifles. The number for the CQB carbines, in turn, is 4.58 lakh.

The defence ministry had issued the RFPs (request for proposals) for the limited number of assault rifles
and carbines, which will equip soldiers deployed along the borders with Pakistan and China, under the
FTP route in March last year.

The defence ministry has said the huge shortfalls in the basic infantry weapons will be met at a later
stage with Indian companies (private ones as well as Ordnance Factory Board) tying up with foreign ones
to manufacture them under the “Make in India” framework, which could take at least four to five years
to actually take off.

The Army, incidentally, had first asked for new assault rifles and CQB carbines for its 382 infantry
battalions (each with 850 soldiers) way back in 2005. But the long-drawn procurement projects were
repeatedly scrapped due to graft allegations or unrealistic technical parameters as well as the lack of
indigenous options for well over a decade.

Consequently, the new modern rifles and carbines will be only for infantry battalions deployed on the
front, while the bulk of the weapons with “reduced technical specifications” for the force would come
through the indigenous route.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-inks-deal-with-us-firm-for-72400-assault-
rifles/articleshow/67962046.cms
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