RBI governor

Patel added that the Reserve Bank of India will support growth, but not at the cost of inflation.

According to Patel, while the 2 percentage point on either side of the 4% inflation target gives the central bank some flexibility, RBI’S aim is to keep close to the target itself. “Growth is always there in the Monetary Policy Committee’s scheme of things; we don’t lose sight of that but not at the cost of inflation. However, we have to be careful – we should aim at achieving the inflation target without losing sight of supporting economic growth.”

He also said the real interest rate is important but since it is inherently time varying there cannot be a rigid target for this, and a range is more helpful. “What is important is that in a capital scarce country like India, the real interest rate needs to be positive enough to encourage healthy growth of financial savings; we get into macro difficulties when real rates on financial savings become negative for a length of time,” he said. The real interest rate is the interest rate minus the rate of inflation. land. “No father would like to send his daughter to violence-hit areas of Afghanistan or Syria. I filed a habeas corpus in the high court when my daughter started talking about life in Syria. Do you want me to face the fate of parents of missing 21 from the state?” he said adding his daughter’s case has many similarities with the 21 young menandwomen who went missing from Kerala last year and are suspected to have joined the Islamic State.

Six of the 21 have been killed so far, mostly in drone attacks in Afghanistan.

The ex-serviceman said the case of the missing 21 really opened his eyes. “There are many similarities between these two cases. Some of the persons and institutions involved in indoctrinating them are same. I don’t want to get into details now. I don’t want my daughter to face similar situation,” he said.

Ashokan also insisted that his fight was not against any religion or belief but against ‘a well-entrenched racket that recruits innocent and sends them to the trouble-torn areas.’

“I am an atheist and I don’t believe in any god. I would be the happiest if my daughter would have converted and married a Muslim youth in a proper way. As the high court said this marriage was a sham and fixed by certain fundamentalist elements,” he said, adding that Sehfin was an active member of the Popular Front of India, an extremist outfit, and involved in many cases.

“No father would like to sacrifice his only daughter knowing all facts,” he said. Ashokan insisted that his daughter was not under house arrest and that he also was facing threats. “We face innumerable threats. Due to this we couldn’t interact much with the outside world in the last four months. As a father I only wish good for my daughter and I can’t push her into imminent danger,” he said. Ashokan said he was confident that his daughter would realise this soon. Munda’s security detail, for allegedly passing information about his movement to the Maoists.

Patar, better known as Raja Peter, paid ~4 crore to the Maoists, who were upset with Munda over his frequent outbursts against them, NIA sources said.

A former minister, Munda was shot dead in the Bundu town of his Maoist-hit Tamar constituency on July 9, 2008.

Local Maoist leader Kundan Pahan emerged as the main suspect in the attack in which Munda’s two bodyguards and a student were also killed. A day before he was shot, Munda had lashed out at the Left rebels at a public event.

For almost nine years, the investigation barely made progress as Pahan was on the run. The probe picked up pace after he gave himself up to police in May this year. It also helped that Munda’s son, Vikas, was the Tamar MLA and his All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) a part of the ruling alliance led by the BJP.

After Pahan’s surrender, Vikas demanded his father’s murder be probed by a central agency.”though my father was shot dead by Maoists but we always had a doubt that his political rivals could be behind the murder,” Vikas told HT.

The NIA began the probe in July and questioned Pahan for more than two weeks. “During interrogation, Pahan told us he took ~4 crore from Raja Peter to assassinate (Rajesh) Munda,” the NIA official said.

But Peter was not the only one baying for Munda’s blood, he said. The Left rebels also wanted him dead for his anti-maoist remarks and their central committee had decided to eliminate Munda, the official said.

“According to Pahan it was Peter who bankrolled the operation,” said the NIA official.

Pahan was paid the promised ~4 crore but instead of handing over the money to his bosses, he kept most of it for himself, the NIA official said. Pahan was not the only one betraying his cause.

“We suspect that ASI Singh passed information about Ramesh Singh Munda’s movement to Pahan,” the NIA official said, adding they suspected that Raja Peter put the policeman in touch with Pahan.

The NIA officials say Munda’s killing benefitted Peter politically. He lost twice to Munda, in the 2000 and 2005 assembly elections. But in the by-election called after Munda’s murder, Peter scored a stunning victory in Tamar. He defeated chief minister Shibu Soren, forcing him to resign.

He rose to be a minister when BJP’S Arjun Munda was the CM between 2010 and 2013. He went on to lead the JD (U) in Jharkhand but switched sides to the BJP ahead of the 2014 state election. The BJP, however, decided to give Tamar constituency to AJSU, which fielded Vikas Munda. Raja Peter fought as an Independent but lost to Vikas. inclusion” list as their income doesn’t reflect their economic vulnerability.

It suggested incorporation of additional i nformation and parameters to identify eligible beneficiaries such as credit card with defined credit limit, any member of household earning more than a given level of income each month, and paying income tax. “These parameters were factored in during the rural survey,” an official said.

So far, the housing and urban affairs ministry has not used the SECC data to identify beneficiaries for its pro-poor schemes such as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) and National Urban Livelihood Mission.

But the rural development ministry is using the SECC data for identification of beneficiaries for, say, PMAY, National Old Age Pension Scheme, and National Widow Pension Scheme.

The Hashim committee recommended a three-stage process to identify the urban poor. These were automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion and a scoring index. Any family is automatically identified as poor if it doesn’t have a home, any income or is headed by a woman or physically challenged person, according to the Hashim panel’s method.

A family is excluded automatically from the list if it owns a fourroom home and any of these assets such as a car, air-conditioner or computer, or any of these three together — a fridge, a landline phone, a washing machine or a two wheeler.

The Debroy committee suggested families owning computers with internet connectivity or landline phone should not be “automatically excluded” from the urban poor list. It contended that possessing such assets does not indicate one’s economic power.

The panel felt that these assets facilitates “economic transactions efficiently” and promote “social interactions among people” and it will be “anachronistic” if they are used as a criterion for exclusion of a deserving person from social benefits.

The Hashim committee had recommended excluding such families.