INS Viraat...

The project is estimated to cost ₹852 crore. However, officials said it is still unclear if the project is feasible.

An initial detailed project report (DPR), made by a consultant, proposes the conversion of the ship into comprehensive tourism destination. “But, the activities on the ship have not been finalised yet, and the design is subject to change,” said an official from the ports department. “The luxury hotel and residential accommodation has not been finalised and may be decided based of demand by bidders.”

The official said any activity planned on the ship will be allowed only if it “maintains thebdignity” of the warship, said the official.

According to rough estimates, the government expects an annual revenue of ₹137 crore against a maintenance cost of ₹130 crore. “The project will be implemented on a public private partnership basis by inviting global tenders from investors. We are still doubtful about the feasibility of the project, but we have expressed our interest for the procurement of the ship from the Centre by taking this decision,” another official said.

A committee appointed under the chief secretary will fine-tune the proposal with naval officials. such tehsils may be reeling under drought, but have not been considered for financial assistance.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said the government was ready to cover more tehsils and revenue circles. “We will constitute a committee that will look into it and take the decision,” Fadnavis said.

“Following the disaster management manual, we have declared drought in 151 tehsils. Apart from them, the state cabinet has also decided to declare 250 revenue circles that have received less than 75% of the average rainfall this year,” Fadnavis said.

It will cost the state around ₹7,000 crore to compensate farmers for crop damage. The farmers who grew crops on non-irrigated land will get a compensation of ₹6,800 hectare up to two hectares. In case of irrigated land, they are entitled to get compensation of ₹13,500 a hectare, while for horticulture crops, farmers will get ₹18,000 a hectare as compensation up to two hectares, following National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) norms.

For this, the state will now seek financial assistance from the Centre, under the National Disaster Relief Funds norms. It will also have to shell out an estimated ₹2000 crore from its own kitty for the 250 revenue circles that were declared drought-hit on Thursday.

“We will ask Centre to provide monetary assistance to tackle drought situation under NDRF norms. We are estimating expenditure of around ₹7,000 crore to be given for those affected by crop loss. However, farmers from the revenue circles will be given financial assistance from our own kitty as they don't not fit in the NDRF norms which is mandatory to get monetary help from the Centre,” said relief and rehabilitation minister Chandrakant Patil.

The 250 revenue circles are from 29 tehsils that were not considered as drought-hit following manual verification also called as ground truthing. The state government had earlier selected total 180 tehsils on the basis of a report of National Centre for Crop Forecasting (NCCF), a forecast agency that works under agriculture ministry, Patil said. sion can be planned accordingly,” said the second person cited in the first instance, who also works for AAI.

In May, Hindustan Times had reported that at least 25 of the 50 busiest airports in India are already operating beyond their capacity, while almost all the others will reach optimal capacity in 2018-19.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on May 2 approved investments in expansion and upgradation of integrated terminals in Chennai, Guwahati and Lucknow by AAI at a cost of ~2,467 crore, ~1,232 crore and ~1,383 crore, respectively.

Minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha, while announcing the expansion plan, said ~1 lakh crore would be invested to increase the capacity of Indian airports.

The government has launched a new initiative called NABH (Nextgen Airports for Bharat) Nirman to enhance airport capacity by five times to one billion trips in the next 10-15 years.

Increasing capacity requires both development of greenfield airports and expansion of existing airports; the plan is to use AAI and also involve private firms.

AAI, which runs all the nonprivate civilian airports in the country, is in the process of implementing plans to create additional capacity in airports in Agartala, Patna, Srinagar, Pune, Trichy, Vijayawada, Port Blair, Jaipur, Mangalore, Dehradun, Jabalpur, Kolhapur, Goa, Rupsi, Leh, Calicut, Imphal, Varanasi and Bhubaneswar with a capital expenditure of ~20,178 crore over the next four to five years.

The private firms that run the Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad airports are also working on expansion plans that will require an investment of ~25,000 crore over the next five years.

“Airports are not just a shiny terminal building; airside is equally important... capacity of runway and taxiway also need to be expanded. More holistic action plans need to be developed for the modernisation of airports. AAI along, with private developers, should form a joint action group to come up with a modernisation plan,” said Mark Martin, founder and CEO of Dubai-based Martin Consulting. not paid attention to this demand, and this has now claimed five lives,” said Manoj Rane, 33, who lives in the area.

KDMC officials said they will check the drainage line. A senior officer from KDMC requesting anonymity said, “If the locals have complained about the road and drainage lines, we will investigate why the complaints weren’t looked into. We will also repair the drains at the earliest and if the contractor is found guilty of shoddy work, action will be taken.”

A police officer from Kolsewadi police said,”we have registered three cases of accidental death. We are investigating will register cases under relevant sections of IPC.”

Subbarao himself had differences with then finance minister P Chidambaram . In October 2012, the Congress leader “went public with his displeasure at the Reserve Bank’s decision not to cut interest rates,” according to Subbarao.

“I found that all through my tenure, the government was distinctly uncomfortable with the Reserve Bank raising interest rates and seemed convinced that monetary policy was choking growth,” he writes.

He stresses that his “counterargument to the finance ministry used to be that it was not high interest rates that were standing in the way of investments.”

“What matters in investment decisions is not the nominal interest rate but the real interest rate, which is the interest rate after knocking out the impact of inflation.”

On why central banks need autonomy, Subbarao says in the book that the aim of monetary policies is to “preserve price stability by maintaining low and steady inflation consistent with the economy’s potential growth rate”. This needs long-term views andmaybesomeshort-termpain.

“But political regimes, especially democracies, have little tolerance for such pain; electoral politics push them into compromising long-term sustainability for short-term expediency,” Subbarao adds in the book.

Such differences date back to 1936, when the first RBI governor Sir Osborne Smith quit after 15 months of the founding of RBI (but stayed on till June 1937) following differences with the colonial government on exchange rate policy.

Benegal Rama Rau, successor to the first Indian governor CD Deshmukh, too, had to resign in 1957 after differences over monetary policy, credit policy and deficit financing, according to Rahul Bajoria’s ‘The Story of the Reserve Bank of India’.

Even Manomohan Singh, who was the RBI governor from 1982-85, was believed to have been in a disagreement with then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, according to TCA Raghavan’s ‘A Crown of Thorns’. the basis of a complaint from a Hyderabad-based businessman, Sana Satish Babu. The businessman was a suspect in a case probed by a team under Asthana; interestingly, this was the case where Asthana had alleged interference by Verma.