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I was part of the Deloitte team that did a study on ‘Survey on Business Regulatory Environment for Manufacturing - State Level Assessment’. We visited all the 28 states (back then) and spoke to hundreds of industrialists about their problems (I myself visited 5 states).Accenture, Bain, KPMG and EY did similar reports. The work EY did in Rajasthan is particularly good. The Accenture report is a good summary. (Links provided below)But let me answer your question briefly (The views expressed below are my own, and not Deloitte’s).Poor infrastructure: This increases the cost of doing business. For example, it is cheaper & faster to move a container by ship from Singapore to Chennai than it is to move the same container from Chennai to Mumbai by road / rail.Perverse pricing of key inputs: Populist governments (both Centre & State) cross-subsidise consumers by charging higher prices from industry. Examples: Rail freight rates in India are one of the highest (& passenger rail tickets in India are one of the cheapest). Industrial electricity rates in India are kept extremely high to offset losses from giving subsidised electricity to consumers.High cost of land: The high population density in India means that people have less land per person, and are unwilling to give it up. Also, uneducated farmers (who own most land in India) get a sense of security from land (since they don’t have the skills to get a well paying job). Most parts of India have very fertile double-crop land, which makes it even more valuable to farmers. Finally, the nexus between land mafia and politicians (the middlemen) increases cost of land further.Skill deficit: Although India has a huge population, the average level of education & skills is very low. Only a small fraction of people get proper vocational training. As a result, most of the population is un-employable. This makes the salaries of those who have the skills very high (Experienced welders in steel plants get a salary of Rs. 90,000 - much more than engineers! And skilled long haul truck drivers get a salary of Rs. 40,000 - again much higher than entry level engineers).Perverse laws: Examples: 1. The MNREGA has resulted in a huge fraction of people staying back in their villages instead of trying to find jobs in industry. Instead of linking payment to work, the Govt. should have simply handed over the money for free. This would have freed up the labour for industry. 2. The Industrial Disputes Act is the most regressive labour law in the world. It basically means that if your manufacturing unit has more than 100 workers, you can’t fire anyone (even if the worker sleeps / doesn’t do any work). As a result, firms pay a high price when an employee stops performing.Cost of credit: Due to high inflation (especially during UPA 2), interest rates in India have remained high for a long period.Corruption: Setting up /running an industrial unit is a nightmare in India (compared to setting up a software company for example). All the State Govt. departments demand bribes in return for clearances. Worst offenders are the Pollution Control Departments (especially if you are an ‘Orange’ / ‘Red’ category industry), The Labour Departments and Tax Departments. You even have to pay a bribe to get your Boiler safety checked and getting your weights & measures approved! (Most of these inspectors don’t even enter your factory. They will directly come to your office to ‘settle’).Tax system: The multitude of Centre, State & local levies means filling out dozens of forms, filing dozens of returns, paying chartered accountants each time, as well as dozens of visits to Tax Departments, and paying bribes to dozens of different officials. Also, it increases the cost of road transport (due to inspections & bribe taking at state borders - for states that levy octroi / entry tax). Finally, the GST will solve this problem completely!Democracy: China can just clear out entire villages to build a highway / factory. They can cut as much forest land as possible without any friction. They can easily pass a new law / change an old law that will make life easy for industrialists. In Indian democracy, there are protests, debates, arguments, investigations, committies, and political opposition that slow down everything. Examples: 1. POSCO is the single biggest FDI in India’s history. They still haven’t got land after 10 years due to protests. 2. Green NGOs are basically linked to political mafia and they harass industrialists until they / their political masters are paid.Other factors: (a) Slow legal system leads to difficulty enforcing contracts. (b) Getting construction permits in India is one of the slowest & most corrupt processes in the world. (c) Getting an industrial electricity connection in some states takes 3 months + bribes (although not in all states). Note: See World Bank Report on Ease of Doing Business for more details.A lot of states are focusing on gimmicks like ‘Single Window Clearance’ - basically a single form instead of around 20 forms to start a new manufacturing business. But unless the above factors improve, manufacturing cost in India will remain higher than China.Side note 1: You will notice that most of the above 10 points don’t affect the services sector. This explains why the IT sector has done so well in India.Side note 2 (This is a tricky concept to explain): While depreciation / appreciation of a currency does affect the cost of doing business, the value of Chinese Yuan being higher than Indian Rupee has nothing to do with cost of manufacturing. For example, the Japanese Yen has lower value than Indian Rupee. But, Japan is a more expensive country than India. The Italian Lira was one of the lowest valued currencies in the world (before Euro came in). But, things weren’t cheap in Italy. Tomorrow, if the Indian Govt. defined ‘New Rupee = 100 x Rupee’, that will give New Rupee a higher value than Chinese Yuan & even US Dollar. But things won’t become more expensive in India. Prices will simply be re-defined in terms of the new currency.Edit:- Providing the links to the reports below:Deloitte & Planning Commission Report: http://www.planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/rep_enf0705.pdfAccenture & DIPP Report: http://dipp.nic.in/English/publications/Reports/improve_BusinessEnvironment_06May2014.pdfFICCI & Bain Report: http://ficciempoweringindia.com/Report.pdfCII & KPMG Report: https://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/KPMG-CII-Ease-of-doing-business-in-India.pdfWorld Bank’s ‘Doing Business Report’: http://www.doingbusiness.org/~/media/GIAWB/Doing%20Business/Documents/Annual-Reports/English/DB16-Full-Report.pdf

Here’s a “big-picture” of cow protection phenomenon and a top-to-bottom view of events that have lead to cow related violence.India has an estimated 280 million cows[1] but killing and eating them is legal in only 8 out of 29 states. Meanwhile, neighboring Bangladesh, where beef is in high demand, suffers from a severe shortage of cattleAccording to the data from Bangladesh’s Department of Livestock Services (DLS), the country requires 71 lakh tonnes of meat annually but can only produce 62 lakh tonnes[2] Their slaughterhouses just cannot source sufficient cows from within the countryDue to such high demand, cows from India fetch 5 to 10 times their price in Bangladesh. A cow that costs Rs 5,000 in India easily fetches up to Rs 50,000 in Bangladesh[3]This has given rise to a highly profitable cattle smuggling business across India-Bangladesh border. An estimated 1.5 million to 2 million (15 lakh to 20 lakh) cows are smuggled across the border every year[4]According to “The Sunday Guardian”, an estimated 60,000 cattle are smuggled out of India into Bangladesh “every day", which indicates the enormous scale of the trafficking. In monetary terms, this illegal cross-border trade is estimated to be worth Rs 5,000 crore to 10,000 crore (more than $1.5 billion) a year [5]Source: ABC Australia, UCA News, Business-Standard, International Business TimesMany instances of cow smuggling across the border have been caught on camera and such videos can be watched here, here, here and here. Short video reports on this issue are also published by India Today and German Media DWMillions of cows slaughtered in Bangladesh actually originate from India. Most of these cows are sourced by stealing them from some poor farmers of Indian villages in Rajasthan, Bihar, Haryana, Punjab or Odisha – whose livelihood depends upon these cattleSource: Times of India, Deccan Chronicle, The Hindu, Indian ExpressMany instances of cattle being stolen are caught on CCTV cameras and some such videos can be watched here, here and hereAnother market for such stolen cattle is illegal slaughterhouses within India. These are unlicensed abattoirs, not approved by government, mostly set up under unhygienic conditions and do not follow any safety or hygiene standards for food processingCows stolen from across the country are sold to these slaughterhouses at a premium who then sell their meat to make money. There are 30,000 such illegal slaughter houses across India [6]Source: Indian Express, Times of IndiaAs per a Hindustan Times report, in just 7 years period between 2009 to 2016, Rajasthan police registered over 3,000 cases of cow smuggling, arrested nearly 6,000 people for the crime and seized over 2,700 vehicles used for cattle smuggling. If there are “thousands” of such criminals in Rajasthan alone, then one can imagine the scale at country levelSource: Hindustan TimesHordes and hordes of cattle are stolen from poor farmers across the country every day, filled brutally in trucks, transported across the country to border areas in Assam and West Bengal and then smuggled to Bangladesh. Many cattle die during the transport itself and many die while being smuggled across the fence [7]Like any other billion dollars but illegal business, cattle smuggling is an organized crime syndicate, comprising of thousands of criminals who are armed, vicious and deadly. Anyone who obstructs the business anywhere along its supply chain, is likely to be attacked and murderedWhile sourcing the cattle (stealing from poor farmers), if cattle owners try to stop the act, they are shot, stabbed or crushed under vehicle and killedSource: Times of India & Times of IndiaThen, while transporting the stolen cattle from villages to border areas, if they are stopped by police, they are shot or rammed by trucks and killedSource: Indian Express, Deccan Chronicle & India TodayFinally, when crossing the border, if caught by India’s Border Security Force (BSF), then they are shot or crushed by vehicles tooSource: Times of India, The Hindu, Indian Express & Business-StandardThe mobs of meat mafia are fearless and these criminals show no inhibitions in violently attacking law enforcement officers, media personnel or animal rights activists if they try to inspect illegal slaughterhouses or even report against themSource: India Today, Deccan Herald, Times of India & FirstpostRecently in UP, two temple priests reported ongoing illegal slaughters in their neighborhood. The smugglers tied them to a cot, chopped off their tongues and then slit their throat to send a message to anyone who reports to police [8] [9]Source: India Today, TimesNowUnder these circumstances, farmers in many villages across India have formed groups to protect their cattle from theft. In order to protect themselves from armed gangs of smugglers, most such people act in organized groups called “gau-rakshaks” (protectors of cows)So, does this write-up intend to justify mob violence or lynchings in the name of cow protection? No, absolutely notViolence in response to violence will lead society into anarchy. PM Modi has himself denounced it multiple times [10] and in many cases, “cow protectors” involved in mob violence have been sentenced for life in prison [11]The intention of this write-up is to illustrate many dimensions of this issue that have not been fully understood. Indian media has mostly portrayed this as an issue linked to religion, which is not completely true. In most cases, “cow protectors” confront anyone when they are caught stealing animals or when they are seen transporting cattle suspiciously. “Cow protectors” do not look for “Muslims” and start attacking them. Religion of victim is incidental, and not the trigger for confrontationAs per the data published by Hindustan Times in 2017, almost half of the victims in such incidents were non-Muslims.Source: Hindustan TimesIn most cases, “cow-protectors” act as “police informers” and resort to handing the culprits to police after catching them. But these incidents have no “sensation value” hence do not get much media coverageCases of uncontrolled mob frenzy where victims are killed are few and far between – but these are the ones which get highlighted. This presents a skewed picture of the issue instead of a holistic perspectiveMany elite Indian journalists have never stepped at any incident site or talked to people involved. Sitting in their ivory towers, they have just passed the verdict that this is an “anti-Muslim” issue. Such inaccurate, half-baked and irresponsible portrayal has caused religious friction within Indian society and also tarnished India’s perception internationallyIndian journalist Barkha Dutt published an article in Washington Post on acts of violence by “Cow Terrorists” against “Muslims” [12] Atish Taseer painted Indian society negatively in NewYork times [13] Shekhar Gupta called India as “Lynchistan” [14] Another Indian journalist Sagarika Ghose has been maintaining a list of incidents on Facebook [15] where “Muslims” have been attacked by mob due to cattle related issuesNumber of lynching incidents in last 4 years according to Ms. Sagarika’s list where identity of victims was “Muslim” = 26Unfortunately, nobody is maintaining any list of dead victims whose identities were –Poor farmers trying to protect their cattlePolicemen performing their dutyBSF men protecting the bordersLaw enforcement officers, animal activists and innocent citizens who reported such crimesThe above list,if created would contain thousands of names of people belonging to multiple religionsMeanwhile, when a victim named Rakbar Khan died in one such incident in Rajasthan, the only aspect that got highlighted in most media coverage was his religious identity. Some other aspects of the incident that didn’t get enough attention were that -he was transporting cows between 12 midnight and 1 amhe had no papers about the ownership of animalshe already had one prior FIR against him for smuggling cows in 2014 [16]Unfortunately, violence due to cattle related issues has been painted as a religious issue due to political reasons and shows cow protectors as fanatics looking to attack Muslims. In reality, it is a socio-economic issue where many such people are themselves in a struggle against an armed and dangerous mafia to protect -their source of livelihoodtheir propertytheir children and their familiesWay forward:The Indian government since 2014 has started a crackdown on cattle smuggling. The government’s stress on completing the new fence along Bangladesh border by 2019 (about 2,800km is already complete) and tighter vigil by BSF armed with night-vision cameras and lasers have made smuggling tougher [17]About 5.32 lakh heads of cattle valued at about Rs. 350 crore have been seized since 2014 [18]In 2017, “The Sunday Guardian” reported that Indian government efforts have brought a significant drop in cow smuggling along the border [19]With effective elimination of cow smuggling, such confrontations between cow protectors and smugglers are expected to die down tooFootnotes[1] Nothing's sacred: the illegal trade in India's holy cows[2] Beef too costly in Bangladesh[3] Chilli in genitals, pierced with nails: How cattle is smuggled into Bangladesh[4] Cattle Smuggling: A Dangerous, Illegal And Highly Profitable Trade Between India And Bangladesh[5] Cattle smuggling is big and violent business on India-Bangladesh border (IANS Special) [6] Cattle theft in India - Wikipedia[7] KR Puram horror: Cow found dead with legs tied[8] 5 accused for killing 2 sadhus from Uttar Pradesh[9] Killing of sadhus sparks tension in UP’s Auraiya, two policemen suspended[10] Killing people in name of cow not acceptable, Gandhi won't approve: PM Narendra Modi in Gujarat[11] Jharkhand lynching case: 11 cow vigilantes get life sentence for killing Muslim trader[12] Opinion | Will Modi stop India’s cow terrorists from killing Muslims?[13] Opinion | Anatomy of a Lynching[14] Shekhar Gupta on Twitter[15] Sagarika Ghose[16] In Alwar lynching incident, police admit to ‘error of judgement’[17] Chilli in genitals, pierced with nails: How cattle is smuggled into Bangladesh[18] Cattle smuggling goes on along Indo-Bangla border[19] Bengal’s cow smuggling business is drying up - The Sunday Guardian Live

Considering how the volume of online news articles has exploded recently, it is but logical that technology is being leveraged.If you are an avid consumer of news, you would have felt the nagging sensation that a lot of articles now published seem eerily similar in terms of the flow and the tone. That is because it likely has not been written by a human.Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Machine Learning, NLP, etc are all being used in journalism. Most publishers use some degree of automation to pre-populate drafts based on NLP or Fuzzy Logic and then have the human writers and editors work on refining them for final publication.[1]…Bloomberg news is one of the first adaptors of this automated content. Their program, Cyborg, churned out thousands of articles last year that took financial reports and turned them into news stories like a business reporter.Forbes also uses an AI took called Bertie to assist in providing reporters with first drafts and templates for news stories.The Washington Post also has a robot reporting program called Heliograf. In its first year, it produced approximately 850 articles…Like how The LA Times is using AI to report on earthquakes based on data from the U.S. geological survey and also tracks homicide information on every homicide committed in the city of Los Angeles. The site created by the machine called “Homicide Report” utilizes a robot-reporter with the ability to include in its reports tons of data that includes: the victim’s gender and race, cause of death, officer involvement, neighborhood and year of death.This approach works well for objective reporting in cases that mostly consist of numbers, figures, statistics, and different slices and dices of data — earnings report, economic data, demographic studies, live sports updates, elections.[2]Examples of machine-generated articles from The Associated Press:TYSONS CORNER, Va. (AP) — MicroStrategy Inc. (MSTR) on Tuesday reported fourth-quarter net income of $3.3 million, after reporting a loss in the same period a year earlier.MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Jonathan Davis hit for the cycle, as the New Hampshire Fisher Cats topped the Portland Sea Dogs 10-3 on Tuesday.Bots and automatons have become so significant to reporting that there are separate award categories to recognize their contributions.The Post has an in-house robot reporter called Heliograf, which demonstrated its usefulness with its coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and the 2016 elections. Last year, thanks to Heliograf, The Post won in the category of Excellence in Use of Bots at the annual Global Biggies Awards, which recognize accomplishments in the use of big data and artificial intelligence.Technology use is not limited to simply preparing first drafts, but also to schedule and publish, take care of SEO and social media publishing, data crunching and analysis, visualizing the larger picture around the article, and to identify fake news.Examples:#1: Washington Post — Knowledge Map (Providing background information)Knowledge Map gives readers an easier way to catch up on ongoing stories by quickly and seamlessly providing relevant background, additional information or answers to frequently asked questions, when the reader wants it.#2: NYT — Editor (Automated tagging and annotation)Editor is an experimental text editing interface that explores how collaboration between machine learning systems and journalists could afford fine-grained annotation and tagging of news articles. Our approach applies machine learning techniques interactively, as part of the writing process, rather than retroactively. This approach can offload the burden of work to the computational processes, and can create affordances for journalists to augment, edit and correct those processes with their knowledge.#3: BBC — Juicer (Automated RSS feed monitoring and aggregation)BBC Juicer is a news aggregation 'pipeline'. It ingests news articles and extracts the best from them - well, just like a fruit juicer does. BBC Juicer pipeline is watching RSS feeds of news outlets. When a new article is published on one of these RSS feeds, BBC Juicer scrapes the news article, both raw text and metadata (e.g. date, time, title, news source ...). In the next step BBC Juicer identifies and tags concepts mentioned in the article text making them searchable and therefore useful for trend analysis. The Juicer API allows users to retrieve JSON representations of the news articles.Fun experiment — you can try AIWriter to create automated news stories for any topic. I did so for “Australian Bushfire” and below is the output (complete with references). Eerie!The 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season runs from June 2019 to March 2020, and the scale of these seasonal fires is unprecedented. At least 34 people were killed, more than 5,900 buildings, including 2,779 homes, were destroyed and an estimated 46 million hectares burned. The summer months of December and January were particularly devastating, when hundreds of fires were burning and a state of emergency was declared. Wildfires occur throughout the summer in Australia, typically in February.A severe drought, which has led to the hottest and driest year on record, combined with persistently high temperatures and windy conditions, has created a very dangerous fire situation in many areas of the country. A series of massive bushfires in Australia have been fuelled by record temperatures, drought and strong winds in recent months.Authorities in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) have declared a state of emergency as a massive bushfire rages south of Canberra. Hot and windy conditions are expected to return to much of New South Wales over the weekend. Although recent cooler conditions and rain have eased some of the fire's flames, more than 50 fires are still burning nationwide, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.The state is entering the bushfire season, putting many districts at high risk of bushfires, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The ongoing bushfires and wildfires confirm warnings by researchers several years ago that bushfires are on the rise across Australia due to climate change. A warming climate in Australia is accompanied by heat waves, characterized by increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods.The Bureau of Meteorology said in its 2003 annual report that the fire complex has burned more than 1.1 million hectares in Victoria alone, making it the largest fire ever recorded in the state's history and the third largest in Australia. A similar situation occurred in 2010, when Melbourne set a record - and reached high temperatures after a long drought. The deadliest fire in Australia's history was on Black Saturday, according to the National Fire Service of Australia (NWS).A total of 75 people died in the fire, including four children, two women and two men, according to the National Fire Service's annual report.One fire that burned in Victoria in December 1938 merged with another to form the massive blaze known as Black Friday. Australia is facing one of the worst fire seasons in its history, according to the National Fire Service. Dozens of fires have broken out across the country this year, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency in November 2019. Although the rain has helped contain many serious fires by February 2020, the situation could worsen in the future.The fires are not being blamed on arson, but on the prolonged drought and record-breaking heat wave. The south and east of Australia, where some of the worst fires have raged, is suffering from the "worst drought on record," according to Greenpeace. The fires have spread across the country and are the most devastating on record, with more than 1,000 fires raging in Victoria alone and at least 100 in Queensland.Climate scientists warn that the scale and devastation of forest fires is one of the ways climate change can exacerbate natural disasters. The most obvious way to communicate and compare this fire disaster with other fires is to focus on the area of the areas burned by the fires.According to the Home Office, more than 5.4 million hectares have burned so far in NSW alone. To put that into perspective, it's about the size of the entire state of New Zealand, "said the US Forest Service's National Fire and Emergency Management Center.In Australia's recent bushfire crisis, these figures give a sense of the unprecedented scale of the disaster. The fire has increased in recent weeks, with more than 1.5 million hectares of land burning in Queensland alone, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.The fire has now claimed at least 29 lives and destroyed more than 2500 homes, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Queensland Fire and Rescue Service.An estimated 1.25 billion animals have been lost, and scientists fear more deaths because of the fire's impact on the planet's ecosystems. The risk of climate change and its impact on human life is taking its toll and affecting all living beings on the planet, including humans, animals, plants, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, fungi, bacteria, mammals and even plants.Commentators were quick to point out that Australia has always experienced severe bushfires. However, a fact check by the Guardian reported this year's fires in Australia's worst-hit regions were among the largest in several decades.According to the Guardian, the total area burned by fires in NSW in 2019 was the largest since 1984, when the region was struck by lightning on Christmas Day.Cited Sources8 things everyone should know about Australia’s wildfire disaster 0Bushfires in Australia: a serious health emergency under climate change 1Six Months After Australia’s Wildfires, Recovery Continues 2Media reaction: Australia’s bushfires and climate change | Carbon Brief 3Australia fires: A visual guide to the bushfire crisis 42019-20 Australian bushfires-frequently asked questions: a quick guide 5How did the Australia fires start? Causes of the bushfires explained 6The magnitude of Australia's bushfire crisis captured in five big numbers 7What you need to know about the Australia bushfires 8Footnotes[1] Did A Robot Write This? How AI Is Impacting Journalism[2] The Rise of the Robot Reporter