RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on Tuesday launched a new service, which will enable over 40 crore feature phone users to undertake digital payments in a secure way. The service christened UPI (unified payments interface) '123PAY' is a three-step method to initiate and execute services for users which will work on simple phones which do not have an internet connection. Das said, as of now, the multifaceted features of UPI are mostly available only on smartphones, which excludes people from the lower rung of the society from an economic perspective, especially in the rural areas, from accessing the popular service, even though the smartphone prices are going down.
Nikunj Saraf, Vice President Choice Wealth, answers your queries.
Members of a parliamentary committee on Thursday raised the issue of Twitter temporarily locking the account of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in 2020 as well as misrepresentation of the Indian map by the micro-blogging site, sources said.
Acknowledging a job well done can go a long way especially for professionals who are the driving force behind an enterprise's business operations, notes Vijay Gupta, director-global human resources at Rahi, a tech solutions provider.
He said the aim has been to create firewalls to deal with the cyber attacks and that the issue is being addressed in a "serious way".
The Union government had recently amended the BSF Act to authorise the border guarding force to undertake search, seizure and arrest within a 50 km stretch, up from the existing 15 km, from the international border in Punjab, West Bengal and Assam.
In the last couple of months, top Indian IT services providers, including TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL Tech have announced setting up cyber threat management centres in the US and Europe.
'The debate is not whether the Indian defence apparatus is in a state of disrepair, but whether it is capable of securing the defence of the country if any envisaged threat becomes real.'
Technology can help keep us safe, but fear must not be used to track citizens without their consent, he said. The mobile application helps users identify whether they are at risk of the COVID-19 infection.
Mutual funds, as experts and custodians of another set of retail investors' savings, play a speculative game they are neither supposed to nor equipped to do, cautions Debashis Basu.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
'There is simply no evidence of any new or clear policy direction in internal security, and mounting evidence of policy incoherence.' 'Worse, the promise of giving the common man -- and, more importantly, woman -- a greater sense of security has been utterly belied. Indeed, with an escalation of communal posturing and rhetoric, there is a broader sense of uncertainty,' says Ajai Sahni.
The Xi Jinping regime might try to quell internal distress by directing nationalism and militarism against India, warn Ajay Shah and Gautam Bambawale.
The strong response for the IPOs, however, has shifted liquidity away from the secondary markets, with the benchmark Sensex falling 1.3 per cent in the previous two trading sessions.
Admittedly, EVMs too have a UID number and any convergence of data can make the secret ballot system a party of history, warns Dr Gopal Krishna in the 5th part of his series against Aadhaar.
Australia is considering not sending any government officials to the Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing next year amid growing calls from lawmakers for an official diplomatic boycott, the Sydney Morning Herald said in a report on Thursday.
Google on Wednesday launched its global 'Be Internet Awesome' programme for children in India in partnership with Indian comic book publisher Amar Chitra Katha to interweave critical internet safety lessons across eight Indian languages. The tech giant has also launched an enhanced Google Safety Centre in eight Indic languages as part of its efforts to step up safety of users on the internet. Google has significantly increased its resources dedicated to India's Trust Safety teams, including product policy analysts, security specialists, and user trust experts that support over 10 vernacular Indian languages, enabling its central teams to benefit from the local nuance and inputs.
The ministry of home affairs has made the use of Aarogya Setu app mandatory for all employees, both private and public, and pinned the responsibility for compliance on the head of respective organisations.
Kumar said the Commission will follow the time-tested methods of consultations and consensus building in bringing about any reforms and will not shy away from tough decisions, according to an Election Commission (EC) statement.
The bank has decided to embark on a 'Technology Transformation agenda' to provide its customers smoother, faster, and better banking experience.
Chinese tech unicorn ByteDance co-founder billionaire Zhang Yiming on Thursday announced that he will step down as CEO, in a surprise move that signalled a major leadership shake-up at the nine year-old technology firm which created popular global short-video app TikTok. Zhang, 38, who is one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs, said he is ready to step down after nearly a decade of running the world's largest unicorn, becoming the latest among the country's technology founders to quit in their prime. Zhang will step down from his role as CEO of the Beijing-based ByteDance, giving up his day-to-day responsibilities to "be more impactful on longer-term initiatives," the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted the company announcement on Thursday.
The overall Air Quality Index (AQI) of Delhi stood at 398 at 11 am, worsening from 357 at 4 pm on Friday. It was 354 on Thursday, 271 on Wednesday, 302 on Tuesday and 312 on Monday (Diwali).
Aadhaar is falling behind on technology, missing out on confidentiality and has gaps in its data archiving policy and preserving confidentiality in delivery of the cards to people, says a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The performance report, 'Functioning Of Unique Identification Authority Of India', tabled in Parliament on the last day of the budget session notes, assigning a unique identity to all resident Indians was supposed to be the key feature of Aadhaar. But "There were instances of issue of Aadhaar with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaar on faulty biometrics and documents". It says close to half a million such records had to be cancelled by the Unique Identification Authority of India up to 2016.
India, Australia, Japan and the US on Friday pledged to work together for ensuring peace and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific and the world, as top leaders of the Quad grouping announced a slew of new initiatives to take on common challenges, amidst muscle flexing by an assertive China in the strategic region.
Ambassador Pankaj Sharma, Permanent Representative of India to the Conference on Disarmament (CD), Geneva, said India has been drawing the attention of the world towards these threats and the need to strengthen international cooperation to address them through its annual consensus UNGA resolution titled 'Measures to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction'.
The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) Ship 'Sajag' was commissioned by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
Pakistan on Saturday said it was not satisfied with India's 'simplistic explanation' on the 'accidental firing' of a missile that landed in Pakistan's Punjab province and demanded a joint probe to accurately establish the facts surrounding the incident.
Reacting to India's ban on the Chinese apps at a foreign ministry briefing, spokesman Zhao Lijian said, "The Indian government has the responsibility to uphold the legitimate and legal rights of the international investors including the Chinese ones."
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your mutual fund queries.
Govt to play enabler not handler, India never had more decisive government: PM Modi Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday cited his dispensation's push for wide-ranging reforms, including the privatisation of Air India, to assert that the country never had a more "decisive government". Launching the Indian Space Association (ISpA), an industry body aspiring to be the voice of the country's space sector, Modi noted that fields like mining, coal, defence and space have been opened to private players, and said his government's clear policy about public sector enterprises is to open those to private industry where its presence is not required. While opening a host of sectors, the government has built a regulatory environment in which priority has been given to national interest as well as the interests of different stakeholders, he said.
Some members of a parliamentary panel looking into the issue of hate speech on Facebook on Monday expressed the view that whistle-blowers Sophie Zhang and Frances Haugen, who have flagged bias and lack of proper regulation on the social media platform, be called to depose before it, sources said.
A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, that if the government re-thinks about filing a detailed affidavit in the case, he can mention the matter before it.
A bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad granted two weeks' time to the petitioners to respond to the Centre's stand on the matter.
Initial share sales are set to dazzle the Dalal Street in 2022 too as companies are expected to garner up to Rs 1.5 lakh crore in the New Year, continuing with the bullish momentum after 2021 turned out to be the best IPO year in two decades for the Indian market. Excessive liquidity and increased retail investor participation ensured a persistent euphoria in the Initial Public Offer (IPO) space wherein companies mopped up more than Rs 1.2 lakh crore this year even as pandemic gloom shadowed the broader economy. In 2022, the higher amount of funds through the primary market will be largely driven by the mega IPO of state-owned Life Insurance Corp (LIC).
Thinning out of the counter infiltration and counter terrorism grid is fraught with the danger of revival of terrorism in the Poonch-Rajouri area, cautions Brigadier Narender Kumar (retd), the counter-insurgency expert.
'Pakistan was very mature in the way it dealt with the incident.' 'India too owned up to the accident.' 'The whole incident was resolved quite amicably.' 'Both countries should be proud of how they have handled this situation.'
What would an Indian American president of the US look like, sound like and act like, especially on issues and policies pertaining to his or her 'mother-land'?, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The malicious extensions had the ability to take screenshots, read the clipboard, harvest authentication cookies or grab user keystrokes to read passwords and other confidential information
Member-States must ensure that measures taken to counter terrorism comply with their obligations under international law, a spokesperson for the UN secretary general has said, asserting that the global body had "no information" about the whereabouts of Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri killed by a US drone strike in Kabul.
The IAF chief also said Pakistan has become a pawn of Chinese policy and its dependence on China would increase further in future. He said India needs to understand the interplay of some major events in its vicinity that would impact the security scenario of the region.
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