Migrant Workers

No money for cremation’, burial at home

A migrant woman gets emotional while boarding a bus to leave for Bihar, in Amritsar, on Sunday. (PTI)

Guddu Mandal, 30, who made a living as a ragpicker and labourer, died allegedly in his sleep in Bhagalpur city on Friday — the night after an epilepsy fit and after many days without a proper meal in the lockdown that had left him without work.

He was buried under the floor of his home, his family said, because they did not have any money to cremate him.
Guddu’s younger brothers Om Prakash and Ajay who lived nearby used to drive cycle-carts and, like him, had been without an income for the past two months.
“We should have cremated him, but we did not have even a single rupee with us. We waited for help. We begged at the doors of some rich people in the area for some money, but they abused and shooed us away. When we could not arrange for necessary objects for the last rites, we dug the floor of the house and buried him,” Neeraj, a nephew of Guddu, told reporters.

Guddu was a Hindu and adult Hindus in Bihar are cremated on a funeral pyre after a ritual bath and in new clothes.
“We all were suffering and managing to stay alive somehow. But my brother, who suffered from epilepsy, was becoming weaker every passing day due to lack of proper food. He had a fit of epilepsy on Friday. He recovered after we massaged his body. He slept in the evening and we found him dead on Saturday morning,” Ajay said.
Guddu used to earn around Rs 100 to Rs 200 daily depending on the work he got, but that stopped in the lockdown. He started begging in the area for food and would get some leftovers to see him through the day. His wife had left him years ago.
Their neighbours were as poor as them and could not help, the brothers said.
Guddu’s family blurted out to the neighbours that they had buried him, and police were alerted.
“We exhumed the body and sent it for post-mortem to see whether there was any foul play in his death. He lived in a hut near the railway line and worked as a labourer and a rag picker. He was suffering from epilepsy and also used to consume some drugs. I cannot comment on how he died, but he was buried inside the hut. They are poor people,” Ishachak station house officer (SHO) S.K. Sudhanshu told The Telegraph.

Police officials said no injury was found on the body.
Now, people in the area, social activists the ward councillors have agreed to bear the expenses to cremate Guddu and provide ration for 15 days to his family members.
Contacted, Bhagalpur district magistrate Pranav Kumar told The Telegraph that “lack of money could be a reason for not cremating the body, but the chances of it are meagre, or we can say less than one per cent because government control rooms are there, our entire administration is working, ward councilors are there, many civil society organisations are also working here. It is difficult to believe that people will not get help if they seek it.”
The district magistrate said the police investigation would throw light on what actually happened.

Migrant on Shramik Express dies hungry
By Piyush Srivastava in Lucknow

Migrants arrive to board a special train to at Charbagh railway station in Lucknow on Sunday. (PTI

46-year-old migrant labourer died on a Shramik Express train on Saturday after having had nothing to eat or drink for 60 hours, a nephew who was accompanying him has alleged.
Raveesh Yadav said no food or water was served on the train — in violation of railway regulations — which he and uncle Jokhan Yadav had boarded from Mumbai to travel home to Machhlishahar in Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh.
He said the train had left the Lokmanya Terminal in Mumbai, where the duo worked as construction labourers, at 7pm on May 20 and reached its destination, Varanasi Cantonment station, around 7.30am on May 23.
“But my uncle, who was complaining of hunger and pain all over his body, fainted half an hour before we reached Varanasi Cantonment and died within a few minutes,” Raveesh, 25, told local reporters.

“We weren’t carrying any food or water because we had heard the railways were providing food packs and water bottles on the trains. Even the other passengers in our compartment had no food or water left with them, so nobody could help us. And there was no water in the train at all.”
Ravi Prakash Chaturvedi, additional divisional railway manager, Varanasi, denied that no food or water had been served on the train.
“The man died before the train reached Varanasi Cantonment station. The GRP took the body in custody. Family members of the dead man have said he was a heart patient and may have died because of that,” he said.
Raveesh said: “Yes, my uncle was a heart patient but he died because he was hungry for more than 60 hours.”
He said he and his uncle had bought their tickets for Rs 940 each — adding their voice to hundreds of returning migrants who have rebutted the government claim that no fare was being charged from the labourers.
“My uncle was very hungry when we boarded the train. Despite having some money in our pockets, we didn’t find any food or water to buy on our way,” Raveesh said.
“The train did not stop at any station till Katni, Madhya Pradesh, which it reached after 18 hours. Nothing was available at Katni station, where the train stood for more than three hours.”
Raveesh added: “Later, at many stations, we requested the Government Railway Police and railway officials to provide us water and food. But they ignored us and wouldn’t let us step off the train. The GRP was wielding lathis.”
A day earlier, lack of communication between railway and state authorities had compounded the misery of home-bound migrants. A Jaunpur-bound Shramik train from Mumbai had reached Kashi station in Varanasi at 1.30pm on Friday but was kept waiting more than seven hours — just 40km from its destination.
Railway sources said the Jaunpur authorities had refused to receive the train saying they had not been informed about its arrival in advance.
“We are normally informed two days in advance about such trains so that we can coordinate with the district administration and arrange buses to ferry the passengers to their villages, where they are kept in government quarantine for 14 days,” a railway official told reporters in Jaunpur on condition of anonymity.
“It was not possible for us to arrange about 20 buses for the 1,000-odd passengers within a few hours.”
Harikesh Rai, officer in charge of the GRP unit at Kashi station, said: “Later, it was decided the train would go to Mughalsarai, from where the migrants would be taken to their homes.”
The train reached Mughalsarai Junction around 9.30pm on Friday.
Chaturvedi, the ADRM Varanasi, told reporters: “There was some problem. If needed, an inquiry can be conducted.”

Modi's Gujarat model in shambles

Gujarat High Court has compared the situation in the state to the “sinking Titanic”, bringing under glare the role of the administration that has been handled with kid gloves by the Centre and its political support system that had left no stone unturned to target Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

In Bengal, the Raj Bhavan has gone out of his way to needle Mamata. In Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, the governor won’t even think of troubling chief minister Vijay Rupani.
Given a free hand, the Rupani administration committed such blunders like introducing artificial mechanised breathing machines as ventilators.
The high court has now struck hard. The court’s findings were unpalatable enough to make the BJP, which is aggressively exposing the deficiencies in states like Maharashtra and Bengal, look for a place to hide.

In a 143-page order, the high court described Gujarat as “one of worst affected states” in the country and pointed to “lack of PPE, shortage of ventilators, ICUs and isolating wards.…”
Describing the condition of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital as “pathetic”, Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Ilesh Vora said the hospital “is as good as a dungeon, maybe even worse than a dungeon”.
The judges said “there is no single command and control structure in Civil Hospital” and “the health minister of Gujarat does not seem to be aware of what is going on, nor appears to have ever visited the hospital”.
The withering comments have been earned in spite of reported oversight by the Prime Minister and the fact that the nodal agency to manage the Corona crisis is the Union ministry, headed by Amit Shah who is an MP from the adjacent Gandhinagar. Four Assembly segments of Shah’s constituency fall in Ahmedabad city.

While Bengal is a poor state, Modi sold the Gujarat model to establish his claim as the leader who can take India to newer heights of development.
Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi on Sunday publicly made the comparison between Gujarat and Bengal. He said: “Are the Prime Minister and the home minister even aware of what is happening in their home state? If so, have they ever intervened, chastised or punished the Gujarat government? Have they used similar standards, similar adjectives, similar terms of endearment (sarcastically) and similar inspection teams for Gujarat government as for the West Bengal government? Why has the Gujarat governor not adopted the same intrusive standards as his Bengal counterpart did?”
Singhvi also pointed out that the Gujarat government had submitted in an affidavit to the high court that “more number of tests will lead to 70 per cent of population testing positive for Covid, thereby leading to fear psychosis!”
Asking whether the same criteria were being applied throughout the country by refusing to ramp up testing, Singhvi said: “Is this being done to protect the image of the Prime Minister and the home minister? Is it not playing with the lives of the people?”

Singhvi said the Gujarat government admitted in court that private testing of Covid, even by authorised private institutions, had been stopped. The court blasted the government for artificially controlling infection data.
The Ahmedabad hospital, which used the fake ventilator, has recorded the highest deaths in Gujarat.
Singhvi said the Gujarat government was profiteering in crisis by selling N95 masks at Rs 65 against the procurement cost of Rs 49.61 (admitted in court), at a straight profit arbitrage of 31 per cent.
Whether this is the same Gujarat model that Modi nurtured or successor Rupani distorted, it is difficult to guess.

After UAE, missions in Doha and Muscat speak up

By Our Special Correspondent in New Delhi

This is from The Telegraph 

India’s embassies in Doha and Muscat warned social media users against getting swayed by divisive fake news, stepping in after the country’s envoy to the UAE had on Monday cautioned Indians living in the Gulf nation against making religion-specific derogatory comments.
The embassies put out tweets over the past 24 hours as fake news peddlers fished in troubled waters, seeking to fuel the “#CoronaJihad” narrative that had caught the attention of the international media across the globe, including in the Gulf.

The warnings came days after the human rights commission of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had on Sunday voiced concern about the hashtag.

It was after this that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had broken his silence on the three-week-long sustained campaign by the Right-wing ecosystem to link the Covid-19 pandemic with a particular community, saying the virus “does not see” racial, religious or other differences before striking.

The missions in Qatar and Oman intervened as the fake posts promoting Islamophobia, and the equally fictitious accounts countering it with warnings of a blowback, gained traction and posed a possible strain in bilateral relations with countries where India has had a good standing for long.
“It is clear that fake identities are being used by forces inimical to India to create divisions within our community. Please understand the reality and do not get swayed by these malicious attempts to sow discord. Our focus right now needs to be on COVID-19,” the embassy in Qatar posted, referring to posts by a Twitter handle that had two different profiles.

The mission in Muscat stepped in after a parody account of Omani princess Mona bint Fahad Al-Said posted a tweet threatening expulsion of Indians. “In these challenging times, it is important that we stay focussed and united in our fight against COVID-19, and not get distracted by fake news on social media with malicious intentions,” the mission tweeted.
“The friendly relations between India and Oman are underpinned by our shared values of tolerance and pluralism. Let us all commit to maintaining unity and social harmony at this critical juncture. As PM @narendramodi said: We are in this together.”
Mona Fahad had later posted a message to clear the air, which Indian ambassador Munu Mahawar acknowledged.

Some of these fake posts were called out by fact-checker Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair. “A lot of Pakistani social media users are changing their profiles to look like Arabs (name, profile images), and tweeting out in the lines that the Arabs did since the last few days. A lot of people are falling for these fake profiles.”
Earlier, on Monday, Pavan Kapoor, India’s ambassador to the UAE, had reminded Indian nationals in the Gulf country that “discrimination is against our moral fabric and the rule of law”, after some members of the Indian diaspora were punished for their polarising social media posts that promoted Islamophobia.

Retired diplomat Navdeep Suri pointed out that hate speech emanating out of India provided fodder to those unhappy with the India-UAE friendship.
In a series of tweets, the former ambassador to the UAE said the Gulf country had strong laws against hate speech. “This applies to derogatory remarks against ALL religions.... Bilateral ties are strong and will endure. But unnecessary controversy doesn’t help.”

The interventions by the three missions are an indication of the traction the #CoronaJihad narrative has gained since the Right-wing ecosystem tried to blame the spread of the pandemic on a religious convention held by the minority community in March.
The hashtag had added to concerns fuelled by the debate on the new citizenship matrix and the Delhi riots in February, and this was articulated from the human rights platform of the OIC.

What happened to India, asks UAE princess who called out hate mongering

By Furquan Ameen in New Delhi

This is from The Telegraph 

Princess Hend Faisal Al Qassemi, a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family whose criticism of hate mongering by an Indian led others in her country to speak out, has said that the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were the role models to follow in times such as these.

“There is no winner if this turns aggressive. We have to follow the Nelson Mandela-Martin Luther-Gandhi way of doing things,” said Al Qassemi. “We don’t need another Hitler, we need a new Gandhi,” she told The Telegraph Online on Tuesday.

Al Qassemi, who was among the first to call out an Indian for posting Islamophobic tweets, said that in the Emirates hate speech was a crime and punishable offence.

On April 15, the princess used screenshots of a now de-activated account of one Saurabh Upadhyay to state that anyone who was openly racist and discriminatory in the UAE would be fined and made to leave.


Soon others followed suit. Over the past few days, several influential Arabs across UAE went about sharing hate speeches by Indian politicians and videos of the February violence in north east Delhi.


This led to a response by Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed by several ministers. On April 19, the PMO tweeted quoting Modi: “COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders before striking.”

The next day, India’s ambassador to UAE Pavan Kapoor tweeted: “Discrimination is against our moral fabric and the Rule of law. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this.”

Union Minister Prakash Javadekar described it as a secular-communal narrative being pushed deliberately while Union minority affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi declared that India was always a heaven for minorities and Muslims.
The princess, or “shaikha”, explained the reason behind her April 15 tweet that resulted in a blitzkrieg of support for her on twitter by Arab activists and intellectuals.
“I noticed an Indian making fun of my religion, my prophet, my country and it’s achievements, ridiculed it’s accomplishments and was threatening us on our land. I was shocked and I felt violated,” she said.
Al Qassemi said that many Indians went after her, claiming she was defending the Tablighi Jamaat, who were blamed for spreading the virus. "To be honest, I’ve never heard of them (Tablighi Jamaat). I wasn’t defending a political group in India. I was defending humans being killed," she said.
“What happened to India?” she said, implying that this wasn't the country she knew. "Hinduism is one of the most peaceful religions. Perhaps more than Islam, Christianity and Judaism," she added and recalled how she grew up watching Indian movies, eventually picking up a bit of Hindi too.
She said she has had Hindi-speaking classmates, colleagues, workers and managers and even has “India (Hend)” as her first name.

Crisis started by virus, spread by govt: Bajaj

By Our Special Correspondent in Mumbai

The following is from The Telegraph 

Rajiv Bajaj, the outspoken managing director of two-wheeler maker Bajaj Auto, on Tuesday slammed the Narendra Modi government for enforcing an “arbitrary lockdown” to stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The lockdown is a solution that is looking for a problem,” Bajaj told CNBC TV18 news channel while accusing the government of deepening the country’s economic crisis and perpetuating the misery of its citizens by endangering their livelihood.
“This crisis started with a virus; it is being propagated by the government,” the straight-talking industrialist added.
Bajaj has been a severe critic of the Modi government and its policies and had famously attacked the demonetisation exercise of 2016 which failed to meet its professed objective of shaking down black money from the deepest recesses of the economy.

“All I want is the government to work logically and sensibly. I don’t need a relief package. We don’t have a demand problem… we have a governance problem,” said Bajaj, becoming the first major industrialist to voice frustration with the Modi government’s handling of the latest crisis.
Bajaj Auto, which has plants at Chakan in Pune, Aurangabad and Pantnagar in Uttarakhand, has been battered by the lockdown, exacerbating its troubles that had stemmed from an economy whose growth rate had tumbled to less than 5 per cent in the last fiscal ended March 31.
Production at the two-wheeler maker has come to a complete halt after the lockdown and its dealerships in the so-called green zone areas have not been able to reopen even after the Centre partially relaxed the restrictions on Monday.
Bajaj believes that herd immunity — which in the case of coronavirus can be achieved only after a sufficiently large number of people recover from infection — is the way to go since the development of a vaccine is still two years away.
The Bajaj Auto boss said the authorities must allow everybody to return to work except those above 60 years if they wanted the floundering economy to recover.
The IMF had recently forecast that India’s economic growth would sink to 1.9 per cent this fiscal — its lowest level in five decades — while the global economy would tip into recession with an overall growth of minus 3 per cent.

Bajaj urged the government to scrap the rules under which a dealership or a factory can be sealed for up to three months if an employee is infected with Covid-19.
“This is a draconian move and is preposterous. We will take every precaution and you can inspect the premises every day. Do not hold this sword over the heads of the people,” he said.
“You can start an inspector raj… please subject us to checks over our practices. If there is something wrong, please close us down for two days and allow us to comply with the rules. But what is this? You are locking us completely down for three months…. Nobody will open (their plants) in the current situation,” Bajaj said.
The two-wheeler tycoon said the government’s move to relax restrictions would not achieve the objective because it was fundamentally flawed.
“We have to first be allowed to open our dealerships. No dealership is now open even in the green zones. The situation is arbitrary and erratic and dealers are afraid to open up as they just don’t know what action they will face from the police or other authorities,” he said during the interaction.
Bajaj Auto’s plant in Pantnagar in Uttarakhand had received permission to resume operations. But this provided little comfort, he said, since the supply chains had not been restored and workers were not able to reach the factory.
The company recently said its employees had volunteered to take pay cuts due to the unprecedented situation. Bajaj, who has foregone his entire salary during the period of the lockdown, said the company was working on a plan to save Rs 100-200 crore annually.
“We are tightening everything. We need to secure the ship,” he said, adding that the demand in the automobile sector would return sooner than what many believe once the lockdown ends. 

‘Beaten’ for stepping out for biscuits, UP teen dies

 'Eyewitnesses said the cops beat Rizwan with batons and rifle butts'

By Piyush Srivastava in Lucknow

This is from The Telegraph

 

A teenaged boy, Mohammad Rizwan, whom policemen allegedly beat up while he was trying to buy food, died on Saturday, becoming the first fatality from purported police high-handedness in enforcing the lockdown in Uttar Pradesh.

Rizwan’s father, Mohammed Israil, said his son had felt very hungry on Thursday night.
“Mera babu Guruwar rat ko bahut bhookh lagi thi, toh chala gaya biscuit kharidne. Police ne danda mar mar ke bahut ghayal kar diya (My son felt very hungry on Thursday night, so he stepped out to buy biscuits. The police beat him and badly injured him),” a weeping Israil told reporters outside the district government hospital on Saturday morning. “The police, not the coronavirus, killed my son,” he said.

Villagers at Chhajjapur in Ambedkar Nagar alleged the police had selectively targeted a hungry Rizwan, 19, refusing to let him buy the biscuits citing the lockdown restrictions.

There were other customers at the grocery store whom the police did not stop, claimed a villager, Munna, who said he was an uncle of Rizwan.“Eyewitnesses said the cops beat Rizwan with batons and rifle butts. Some of them later brought him home,” Munna said.He said panic buying by some people ahead of the lockdown — and lack of supplies since then — had left most other households short of food grains and, therefore, chronically underfed during the past few weeks. Among them was the family of Rizwan, he said.

The Yogi Adityanath government had announced plans to supply food grains to the poor at their doorstep. However, many across the state are saying this isn’t happening.“Most of the villagers here had had nothing to eat for more than two days as they had not hoarded food grains at their homes when the lockdown was announced from March 25,” Munna said.

“We were cooking whatever there was at our homes. Israil, a farmer, had not much to cook. So he gave Rizwan some money and asked him to bring biscuits, the only food available in the nearest shop.”
Avanish Kumar Mishra, additional superintendent of police in charge of the area, said: “We are collecting evidence with the help of CCTV cameras and will not spare any policemen, if found guilty.”
Superintendent of police Alok Priyadarshi said: “We are probing it seriously. Action will be initiated against the accused soon.” 

Delhi share wall to stall China

A February report said Chinese FDI into India stood at $6.2b

By R. Suryamurthy in New Delhi

 

This is from the Telegraph

 

The Narendra Modi government on Saturday put in place a regulatory oversight mechanism in a thinly disguised attempt to stop Chinese investors from scooping up stakes in Indian companies whose valuations may have gone through the wringer after the coronavirus outbreak.

The department for the promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) issued a press note that said that foreign investments from countries that share a border with India will require government approval from now on.
The note, which did not mention China, said the change in the policy governing foreign direct investment was designed to curb “opportunistic takeovers or acquisitions of Indian companies due to the current Covid-19 pandemic”.
India shares land borders with seven countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and Afghanistan.

Similar restrictions were already in place for Bangladesh and Pakistan but had till now not applied to China and the other neighbours.
The Modi government had changed its FDI policy in 2017 when it abolished the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, raised the foreign investment limits in most sectors, and permitted most investments through the so-called automatic route.
Many analysts tried to link the sudden decision to a disclosure last week that the People’s Bank of China had raised its stake in mortgage financier HDFC Ltd to 1.01 per cent during the quarter ended March 31 — which had set alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power.
The move to subject Chinese investors to a higher level of scrutiny and a rigorous approval process could hurt FDI flows into two sectors: telecom and technology start-ups.
The bigger worry for investors will be that any change in the beneficial ownership of any Indian entity – directly or indirectly -- as a result of a “transfer of ownership of any existing or future FDI” that falls within the ambit of the new rules will “also require government approval”.
This opens the doors for government scrutiny of cross-border transactions and offshore entities to check any contrived shareholding structures involving tax haven-based entities.
Analysts said the move could see the government demanding an ultimate investor disclosure and scrutiny of all the FDI coming into the country, including those coming through the automatic route.
It normally takes about five months to clear investment proposals made through the approval route. This could widen with the change in the FDI regulations.
The move also came days after former Congress president Rahul Gandhi warned that Indian corporate groups had become easy takeover targets because of the economic slowdown and a meltdown in their valuations.
“We are living in extraordinary times and there is a heightened sense of vulnerability. Given that every country is feeling vulnerable and no one knows exactly what lies ahead, the Indian government seems to have chosen to play safe with regard to investments in India by Chinese companies,” said Saurabh Mukherjea, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers.
Start-ups face heat
The big question that hangs in the air now is whether or not this will impact Huawei’s entry into India with its 5G technology. US President Donald Trump has been pressuring India to ban Huawei’s latest technology.
Several countries in Europe including France, Germany and the UK have resisted similar pressure from Trump. India has permitted Huawei to participate in the 5G trials in India but it is still unclear whether the new FDI changes will queer the pitch for the Chinese technology company.
Technology start-ups could also face severe regulatory scrutiny. Reports suggest that 18 among India’s top 30 unicorns -– a start-up valued at over $1 billion -– have Chinese investors.
Three large Chinese investors -– the Alibaba group, Tencent Holdings and Xiaomi (Shunwei Capital) -– have big stakes in Indian start-ups.
The Alibaba group has stakes in Bigbasket, PayTM, Rapido, Snapdeal and Zomato while Tencent has investments in Byju’s, Flipkart, Hike, Ola and Swiggy. Xiaomi has a footprint in Hungama, Rapido, Sharechat and ZestMoney.
TikTok, owned by ByteDance, is already one of the most popular apps in India and has overtaken YouTube. Xiaomi handsets outsell Samsung smart phones; Huawei routers are widely used in the country.
Bytedance has plans to invest $1 billion in India. Chinese automakers including Great Wall Motor Co Ltd and MG Motor, a unit of China’s SAIC, have said they also intend to invest in the country.
A February report by research group Gateway House said Chinese foreign direct investment into India stood at $6.2 billion.
Atul Pandey, partner at Khaitan & Co, said: “The notification is not restricted to prior approval for direct investments by Chinese firms and also restricts any transfer of investments/ future FDI resulting in beneficial ownership falling with Chinese firms.
However, the mode of computation of “beneficial ownership” is still unclear. “The intention of the government is clear in wanting to evaluate Chinese investments on a case-to-case basis. However, it is important to note that this notification will have the force of law once necessary amendments are introduced to the relevant regulations under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema).”
He added: “The government could seek ultimate investor disclosure in the reporting forms to identify who is the actual/ ultimate beneficiary. Market regulator Sebi has already asked for disclosure of beneficial ownership from all foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) last week.”
Several countries have already adopted similar restrictions to stop foreign investors from grabbing control of domestic entities. Australia recently said all foreign investment proposals would be assessed by a review board during the coronavirus crisis to prevent a fire sale of distressed corporate assets. Germany has taken similar measures.
Cyril Shroff, managing partner at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, said: “It is crucial to note that this is not going to have a chilling effect on investment, given that investments are only placed under the government route and not restricted entirely.”
Analysts said disclosure norms currently exist for investments coming from countries like Hong Kong, Singapore and Mauritius to identify the ultimate beneficiary.
The country permits foreigners to directly invest in areas including oil exploration and airports without having to seek government approvals.
However, there are 17 sectors including defence, telecom and pharmaceuticals that require government approval if a foreign investor intends to invest above a certain threshold.

Proposals involving FDI exceeding Rs 50 billion must be placed before the cabinet committee on economic affairs.