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Ten years ago, <keyword id="19926151" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Chandrababu-Naidu" source="keywords">Chandrababu Naidu</keyword> made a promise that <keyword id="19926152" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amaravati" source="keywords">Amaravati</keyword> would be the capital of <keyword id="19896313" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Andhra-Pradesh" source="keywords">Andhra Pradesh</keyword>. In April 2024, at a public meeting in Tadikonda, he announced that Amaravati is the heart of Andhra Pradesh and if he is voted back to power, he will make sure the city remains its only capital. And true to his word, just before his swearing-in as Chief Minister, Naidu announced that Amaravati would be the one and only capital of the state. No more talk of three capitals, he asserted. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="A capital drama" comment="subhead" text="A capital drama">A capital drama </cmsannotation>In the hustle and bustle of Andhra Pradesh's political landscape, a significant shake-up occurred on June 2, 2024. Hyderabad, once the heart of administrative affairs, bowed out, thanks to the <keyword id="22019611" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Andhra-Pradesh-Reorganisation-Act-of-2014" source="Orion">Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act of 2014</keyword>. The state found itself in a peculiar situation — one without an official capital. While one side of the state’s political spectrum batted for multiple capitals for the state, another pushed for only one — Amaravati! Let's rewind a bit. Telangana became India's newest state in 2013, stirring up the whole capital matter for Andhra Pradesh. Chief Minister at the time, Chandrababu Naidu, had his eyes set on Amaravati as the new capital. He dreamed big, envisioning it as a modern hub of governance. But then <keyword id="64899" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="jagan-mohan-reddy" source="Orion">Jagan Mohan Reddy</keyword> came into the picture in 2019 with a completely different idea — a concept of three capitals! Amidst all the political drama and legal tussles, Andhra Pradesh's administrative setup got stuck in limbo. The High Court stepped in, telling the state to stick to the commitments made by its previous government, making things even more complicated. On June 4, 2024, the state’s fate began to get increasingly clear after N Chandrababu Naidu’s <keyword id="19910623" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="TDP" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="TDP" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="TDP">TDP</keyword> clinched a sweeping victory in the assembly elections. The NDA alliance of TDP, BJP and Janasena won a landslide victory in the recently concluded simultaneous Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state with a brute majority of 164 assembly and 21 Lok Sabha seats. <cmsannotation type="cmsannotation" annotationid="Amaravati: a green smart city in the making" comment="subhead" text="Amaravati: a green smart city in the making"><keyword id="22019612" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Amaravati-a-green-smart-city" source="Orion">Amaravati: a green smart city</keyword> in the making </cmsannotation>Naidu’s decision breathes new life into Amaravati's capital city project. But there's work to be done. With Hyderabad out of the picture, there's a logistical mess to sort out — offices, homes, and civic infrastructure need significant rejigging. It's a hassle, but it's also an opportunity. Amaravati is a new city being built from scratch (greenfield) on a large area (217 sq km) along the Krishna River. By 2050, it's expected to be home to 3.5 million people. The city is well-connected by road, rail, and air to major Indian cities. Land for Amaravati's development was acquired through a special program and the city is being designed with a focus on sustainability and smart technologies. Amaravati was selected in Round 3 of the Central Government’s Smart City Challenge in June 2017. Located along the Krishna River with good transport connections, it was among the few greenfield cities selected under India's Smart Cities Mission. Focus on eco-friendly development and using technology to improve quality of life makes it a smart and sustainable city as per the City Corporation. As Amaravati steps into the spotlight, Andhra Pradesh will hopefully chart its course towards a more stable and sustainable future. (With inputs from PTI)

Announcing Amaravati as the only capital, new CM Chandrababu Naidu breathes life into Andhra’s dream of a smart capital

Meet Allison Greenfield, the law clerk driving Trump bonkers at his fraud trial

Make no little plans," goes an often-quoted cliché in city planning. "They have no magic to stir men's blood." That's from the grandiloquent planner of Chicago, Daniel Burnham, who had a typical late-1800s propensity for wide Paris-style boulevards and white, neoclassical buildings — a prototypical think-about-the-Roman-Empire guy. Even so, Burnham had a point. In citymaking, small plans are for suckers and grifters. For proof, click through the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/images-new-city-northern-california-could-look-solano-county-flannery-2023-9">renderings for California Forever</a>, the recently revealed proposal to turn 55,000 acres of drought-prone Northern California hillside into a glorious city of the future. It looks like a big plan. So far, it isn't.Right now, California Forever is just a website with some ideology and a handful of hopeful sketches with a faintly socialist-utopian flair. The money behind it, though, is real — $800 million from a conclave of tech and tech-adjacent billionaires who for years have been secretly buying rural land in Solano County, between Travis Air Force Base and the Sacramento River. And they would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for the meddling kids at the New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/land-purchases-solano-county.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">unmasking</a> last month the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, and Michael Moritz; philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs; the Stripe-founding Collison brothers; and others. They've all heaped money onto something called Flannery Associates and its leader, a Peter Thiel-quoting former Goldman high flyer named <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-wall-st-cheat-sheet-top-3-traders-under-30-2010-5#jan-sramek--emerging-markets-trader-at-goldman-sachs-1">Jan Sramek</a>. Now Sramek is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/solano-county-flannery-associates-city-of-yesterday-silicon-valley-billionaires-2023-9">making the media rounds</a> more openly, as well as courting the political and landholding forces in Solano.Put aside your feelings about <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-elite-seasteads-floating-city-pandemic-2020-6">billionaires pitching</a> <a href="https://ciceroinstitute.org/charter-cities/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">private libertarian paradises</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-exec-private-charter-city-silicon-valley-techies-2020-6">away from us hoi polloi</a> (which: barf). What the company says it wants to build says a lot about how rich people think cities work — what cities are. They're mostly wrong.<h2>Cities of the future of the past</h2>The California Forever art illustrations show at a place that'll look startlingly familiar. "We think that there's so much wisdom in how we built cities and towns over the last hundreds of thousands of years in some places," Sramek said in an appearance on a <a href="https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101894493/utopia-or-sprawl-tech-group-pushes-plans-for-new-solano-county-city" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bay Area public affairs radio show</a> earlier this week. "The plans that people put forward will be very inspired by those great old American neighborhoods that someone who was born 100 years ago will recognize."If you were hoping that, given a chance to design a greenfield urban enclave, a bunch of secretive billionaires might cough up a zombie- and climate-proof arcology or a neon-lit anime downtown with a space elevator station, you're out of luck. California's highly aggressive species of NIMBYs share with rich would-be homeowners from Silicon Valley an affinity for traditionalism — artisanal neighborhood character, but with higher R-value on the insulation. Hence the renders: Euro-style houses on a hillside angled out over the water, a bucolic row of two- and three-story rowhouses from the 19th century on a tree-lined street full of kids playing, a verdant plaza surrounded by cafes and restaurants with plenty of outdoor seating. You know: nice.I started out by talking about Daniel Burnham, but when it comes to a pitch like California Forever, the better big name from urban planning's deep history is Ebenezer Howard. Inspired by a utopian, socialist novel called Looking Backward, Howard in 1898 pitched a new way to build cities that would counteract the polluted, unequal, brutal places getting extruded by capitalism and the industrial revolution. His "garden city" was a self-contained town with all the amenities and light industry it'd need for economic productivity, surrounded by a "green belt" of agriculture to feed its populace, profit from the surplus, and offer natural, open space for recreation. The green belt would also constrain every city's tendency to sprawl into a Los Angeles.A few places actually tried to build them — England and Japan had a few, and some sprung up around New York and Philadelphia. They didn't work at all. In reality, builders left too much room between houses. Industry moved to rural areas, and big-ticket jobs moved to urban downtowns. Commuter railways and then the automobile turned garden cities into bedroom communities, which then used zoning, banking, and a bunch of other sneaky tricks to make sure only rich, white people could afford to live in them. In other words: suburbs. Think of the hours-long commutes as cosmic justice.In the 1990s, American architects and planners tried it again and made some of the same mistakes. A gloss on the nostalgic idea of small-townish homes centered on a shopping street and transit hub expressed itself in Seaside, Florida — best known for playing the role of the fake town in "The Truman Show." Point is, the garden city remains a dream honored more in the breach — in pitches like the one for California Forever. It tends to turn into something else once ground gets broken.<h2>What's not on the map</h2>In the images of Foreverville I see the following types of transportation: bicycles, kayaks and canoes, and a train that appears to stop next to the sidewalks of a downtown where ten- or 12-story buildings snuggle shoulder-to-shoulder.I get that these are just renderings in a proposal, so I forgive the fact that the train arrives through some kind of tunnel and doesn't seem to have a power source — no locomotive, no overhead power lines. I'll tell you, in municipal politics, putting an electrified third rail through downtown is a real third rail. As far as I can tell the only rail track running through the land in question is a largely abandoned spur that the nearby <a href="https://www.wrm.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Western Railway Museum</a> sometimes runs restored cars on for visitors. (This is a goddamn delight, by the way.)Anyway, you'll notice something missing from the renderings: Cars. The streets in which kids play are empty of them. The plaza has no parking. A crowded street fair amid multistory buildings shows happy people walking in the middle of the street, the sidewalks full of stalls selling…well, you can't see what they're selling. Scented candles, is my guess.Now, it's not impossible to have a city that isn't car-based. In fact, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-doom-loop-fix-american-city-housing-transit-2023-7">I recommend</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/road-rage-speeding-driving-traffic-large-expensive-cars-suv-2022-5">it</a>. After all, before about 1940, none of them were. But these days it takes some planning. Gloriously car-free or car-light places like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/sep/18/paradise-life-spanish-city-banned-cars-pontevedra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pontevedra in Spain</a> also have transit and services baked into the city form; <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pedestrians-take-to-streets-of-paris-for-day-without-cars-2021-9">Paris' "fifteen minute city,"</a> with jobs and shops within that striking range of homes, relies on saturation by rail transit. And right now, a big residential development called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/living-in-a-new-car-free-community-near-phoenix-culdesac-2023-8">Culdesac</a>, in Tempe, doesn't allow cars or on-street parking. Of course, Culdesac is centered on a light rail station, and it only has 700 apartments — not tens of thousands.The only thing that really connects Foreverville's footprint to the rest of the world is California State Route 12, a narrow asphalt ribbon that the locals sometimes call "Blood Alley." California Forever's plan promises to improve and widen the 12 so that the new population doesn't clog the thing up. (Spoiler: Widening a highway literally <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w15376" target="_blank" rel="noopener">never reduces congestion</a>.) So how will people get to and from Foreverville? How will people get around once there? How will the walkable neighborhoods connect to each other? Robot buses? The lack of cars seem like an implicit promise that Foreverville can't keep.<h2>The walk of life</h2>The California Forever website promises "homes, shopping, dining, and schools all within walking distance." That seems to recognize that when it comes to cities, "density" cannot simply mean "maximum people per unit space," especially when the only thing that links them all together is car infrastructure like streets and freeways. That's not walkable. That's — well, that's Los Angeles again.No, the kind of density that makes cities walkable, lovable, and less likely to burn down the planet, requires density of use — short blocks, lots of different kinds of buildings providing lots of different kinds of service, open space, and interconnections to other uses and cities via transit. It's not clear from the renders and statement of purpose that California Forever has any of these things other than the open-space thing.More than that, it's not clear what the city will actually do. A functioning city provides a context for systems to allow people of different backgrounds and classes to mix, to enjoy recreation and each other, to earn money, and to make and move the things that let other people do the same. So what companies will rent the 8th, 9th, and 10th floor office space in the downtown towers? What commercial work will go on, besides latte art, yoga studios, and bike shops? Will the city have lawyers? Banks? Cabinetmakers? Welders? Hardware stores? Artist studios? Comic book stores? The only job anyone seems to be doing in the California Forever renders is installing solar panels, which I fully support, but I do wonder where those hard-hatted solar installers park their F-150s, or live. California Forever isn't pitching a city. It's pitching houses. Now, look, California needs those. The state's housing shortage is egregious. But building new homes on greenfield land, far from jobs or services, is terrible, too. And while the website promises "new employers" and "thousands of permanent, good-paying local jobs," it does not specify where those things will be relative to the hillside homes or the rowhouses, or if those working-class amenities will even be in the new town at all.<h2>Main Street Electrical Parade</h2>When a city doesn't perform all the functions of a city — when it is merely city-esque — things get real weird, real fast. The "row house" render on the web site shows a bunch of different architectural styles, from Edwardian and Victorian to sort of arts-and-craftsy. But in real life, presumably all these houses will be built at the same time. If they're sharing walls, they're likely to be all one building. Maybe the façade won't look variegated at all — the built version could have the shared mansards and unitary faces of Hausmannian Paris or John Nash's London. Nothing wrong with that! But one of the keys to the success of those buildings was that once developers agreed to maintain those facades, they were allowed to do pretty much what they wanted with the building behind them.Alternatively, the builders will add old-timey fronts to make the building look like it's composed of multiple structures built at the turn of the century. It'll be a condo complex hidden in a show building, like the ride part of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. Or instead of row houses, they'll end up building townhouses with a few feet of clearance between them, as is more and more common in typical California residential developments. None of the space- and energy-efficiency of rows, with all the lack of privacy.The same goes for the plaza. It's uncanny. If one of the cafes serves Italian or Korean food, it won't be because that part of town used to be where the Italian or Korean families lived. There was no town; it has no used-to-be. Somewhere in the presumably libertarian homeowner's agreement, the plaza is going to be listed as a Mandatory Enjoyment Zone, with rules for what kinds of signage a Starbucks is allowed to have (instead of keeping rents low enough for a local coffee entrepreneur to pull a latte). The idealized shopping districts of the mid-20th century planned communities mutated into basic malls; that's what's going on here, decades later. This is generative placemaking, the urban design equivalent of a large language model cribbing from all the existing ideas about cities and running them through the tautologitron. Make a city that looks like cities look like!"Authenticity" has never meant much in a city, and it means even less in the post-postmodern era. But still, these renderings cross a border between architecture and Imagineering. It's not an accident that one of the most famous rich people to ever want to build a city from scratch was Walt Disney. California Forever isn't promising Main St; it's promising "Main Street."<h2>The city and the city</h2>The urbanists on California Forever's team certainly understand these potential shortcomings. The project's director of planning, Gabriel Metcalf, is a respected urban planner who used to run the Bay Area's pro-housing smart growth and urban advocacy group SPUR. Also on the team is BH Bronson Johnson, the planner behind Sidewalk, the abortive attempt of Google's holding company Alphabet to build a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/alphabet-sidewalk-labs-abandons-project-for-quayside-toronto-neighborhood-2020-5">new city neighborhood in Toronto</a>. That didn't happen, but the walkability and densified city stuff was smart.But even if they get everything right about the plans and designs for Foreverville, it still faces heavy odds. The team is already dealing with significant local resistance and the need for a whole election's worth of new land use laws. Once they get past all that, even builders with the best of urbanist intentions often fail. Just about 60 miles southeast of the California Forever site is a residential development called Mountain House. In the planning stages, its leaders said all the right stuff — different housing forms, walkability, diverse uses, smart growth. But none of that happened. It's just a development with boulevards.That suburban form — single-family homes set way back from wide, curving streets that lead to eight-lane, high-speed roads, freeways, and Targets — is a default. It's what plans like California Forever look like when brick starts getting laid. "There's just such a momentum and it's so much easier to deliver that," says Dan Parolek, the architect behind Culdesac. Counties don't have the expertise to lay out anything other than homes, boulevards, and Walmarts. Builders do urban infill or suburban planned housing. "Trying to get a builder or developer to build something more urban in a historically suburban or rural environment is really, really hard," he says.A survey that California Forever sent to current Solano residents asked how they'd feel about tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenue (presumably the property taxes on new homes), millions of new olive and oak trees, protection for open space, thousands of jobs, a performing arts center, minor league baseball, and other fun stuff. People like fun stuff; approvals hovered around 60% for it all. It seems like huge change. But a plan that's really just imagineered houses is actually little, in the Burnham sense. Unambitious, unsuited for the new world. Which means it's worth remembering the rest of what Burnham said, the part of the quote most people leave out: Little plans, he said, "probably will not themselves be realized." They tend not to happen at all — at least, not the way their investors pitched them.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers">Adam Rogers</a> is a senior tech correspondent at Insider, covering science, technology, and our weird future. He reports on <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-google-bard-microsoft-bing-break-internet-search-2023-2">online</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-chatbots-chatgpt-google-bard-microsoft-bing-break-internet-search-2023-2">search</a>, how <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/road-rage-speeding-driving-traffic-large-expensive-cars-suv-2022-5">technology</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/led-city-streetlights-turning-purple-broken-tech-danger-2022-11">changes the way we live</a>, and what <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-fail-collective-superintelligence-2022-11">technology entrepreneurs' priorities</a> mean for <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-job-site-blind-anxiety-burnout-recession-stock-crash-2022-5">society</a>.

I looked at the plans for the new city proposed by Silicon Valley elites. They're really terrible.

Development plans for constructing India’s first Greenfield smart city were however drafted way back in 2007. Gujarat International <keyword id="25455" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="finance">Finance</keyword> Tec-City is today India’s most ambitious project for developing the global finance services industry and is presently under construction. It is being developed with the support of a variety of stakeholders from the public and private domain. Apart from this, the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIDC) is developing five <keyword id="6377036" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="smart-cities">smart cities</keyword>, which includes Dholera in Gujarat, Shendra-Bidkin in Maharashtra, Vikram Udyogpuri Township near Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, Integrated Industrial Township in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh and Gurgaon in Haryana. 
 
The government on June 25, 2015 launched three missions aimed at ‘heralding a new urban era’. These included Smart Cities Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Housing for All. These succeeded the government’s earlier move to allocate a distinct number of cities for each state in India. Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu lead the pack in terms of being given the opportunity to nominate the maximum cities that are 13 and 12 respectively for developing them into smart cities. Smaller states in terms of urban agglomeration and populations have been allocated less than two smart cities each. However, the looming concern remains in the implementation of this dream project. It is because INR 48,000 crores has been allocated for 100 cities under Smart Cities Mission over next five years. A simple back of the envelope calculation tells us that this would be 9,600 crores every year and an average of 96 crores for each city every year. 
 With the kind of infrastructural finance requirements, the implementation will be extremely undermined with the present allocation. There is a need to look at <keyword id="109665" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Public-Private-Partnerships">Public Private Partnerships</keyword> (PPP) model with reviewed risk allocations to stakeholders. Also, <keyword id="6354553" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="real-estate">Real Estate</keyword> Investment Trusts (REIT) could play a major role in pooling in of <keyword id="6362476" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="investments">investments</keyword> in the real estate sector. Similarly, the Pooled Municipal Debt Obligation (PMDO) facility can be used to effectively allocate resources for urban development. The financial resources will remain a key determinant for the overall success of the Smart Cities Mission. 
 Another struggle of the cities today is that of a faulty vision that arises due to top-down planning. It was even strongly articulated in a speech by PM <keyword id="6354477" type="PERSON" weightage="80" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi">Narendra Modi</keyword> at the launch of <keyword id="6361555" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Smart-City-mission">Smart City Mission</keyword> that a city should be driven by its residents and city leadership and not by the private property developers. Therefore, envisioning the city, financial requirements and ground level implementation are the three primary factors that will determine the fate of urban development in India over next decade. Failing in any one of the above will be detrimental to the overall cause of urban development in India. An example could be, the Delhi BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System) where explicit inspiration was derived from a similar system in Curitiba, Brazil, without realizing the urban density and requirements of the residents of Delhi. Here a failure of envisioning, as well as of resident requirements, resulted in a redundant urban transportation system. 
 
The Smart City Mission will only be successful if the government and leadership at all levels take into account these three factors in planning for India’s urban future. A synergy between efficient regulatory authorities, residents’ needs, and providers of urban services will thus improve the quality of governance and life in Indian cities. 
 
(Amit Kapoor is Chair, Institute for Competitiveness &amp; Editor of Thinkers. The views expressed are personal. Amit can be reached at <a href="mailto:amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in">amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in</a> and tweets @kautiliya. The article is co-authored with Ankita Garg, Senior Researcher at the Institute for Competitiveness, India.)

The Smart City imperative in India

From Manifest Destiny to Big Tech, Silicon Valley Bank is a case study in how the West was spunAs Silicon Valley Bank went <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/svb-bankruptcy-chapter-11-auction-silicon-valley-bank-closure-fdic-2023-3">down the tubes</a>, it wasn't surprising that the loudest mouths in Techworld started demanding that the federal government <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vcs-and-founders-silicon-valley-bank-meltdown-fdic-supporting-bank-2023-3">cover everyone's losses</a>. When capitalism goes kersplat, even the most libertarian Peter Thiel adherents turn into New Dealers. Sure, they like to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-podcasts-can-teach-us-about-silicon-valley-2022-10">mock colleges</a> as "woke madrassas" and condemn student-loan forgiveness as a moral hazard. But when it's their money on the line, they're all for privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. It's a robber-baron classic.But because the bankers in question here saw themselves as innovating the way startups get funded, their bleating for government aid actually comes from a whole other wellspring. They were pioneers on the frontier of tech and finance, and as such they acted the way pioneers always do. After declaring themselves ungovernable — mavericks too free-spirited to be shackled to polite society — they headed into the wilderness to live off nothing but their rugged individualism. Then they got massacred and came running back to Fort Washington, demanding that the people in charge expand the boundaries of the camp outward to protect their precarious settlements. This cycle of bold sowing and whiny reaping is how the West was won.In SVB's case, the argument went something like this: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-bank-failure-long-term-impact-tech-vc-finance-2023-3">Silicon Valley Bank was different</a> from other, stodgy banks, in part because it was too small to warrant the kind of regulatory oversight that resulted from the 2008 financial crash, and in part because it was too critical to the fast-moving disruptive world of startups and venture capital. Bureaucratic interference would just keep everyone from building value. Ungovernable!That's what SVB's boss <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/16/silicon-valley-bank-ex-ceo-greg-becker-backed-big-tech-lobbying-groups.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Greg Becker argued</a>, and he got what he wanted. The bank was allowed to move <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/silicon-valley-bank-failure-fdic-fed-failure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">outside the government's protection</a>, taking on way more <a href="https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/banking-in-very-uncertain-times/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">financial risk</a> than regulators ought to permit and accepting massive, uninsured cash deposits from flush startups. Then, when the bank's ledger went red, its bosses — along with lots of Silicon Valley's loudest and most influential investors — freaked out, insisting that the government <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-government-bails-out-silicon-valley-bank-depositors-fdic-2023-3">cover all the losses</a>, not just the insured ones, to stave off a wider banking crisis. They banged on the fortified barricades, begging to be let back in.America's boldest pioneers have always been secure in the knowledge that they could run back to mommy and daddy if they scraped a knee. That is one of the main points of one of the classic texts on the subject, Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Frontier in American History," published in 1920. Turner basically says the dynamic I just described is one of the things that drove the western edge of colonialism in North America toward the Pacific. The nuttiest, bravest, most ungovernable people slipped the surly bonds of rules and laws, ventured out, and then put those surly bonds right back on again — just a little further down the road. That's why it took 100 years to get 100 miles inland, and then another 150 or so to get to San Francisco Bay. Venture forth, retreat, get the government to build you a new fort, repeat. Being a whiny pioneer is slow going.Turner's work is controversial today. He thought the European roll across North America was on balance pretty great. He didn't fully acknowledge that what white folks called a frontier was someone else's living room, or that the pioneers had a pretty weak moral case for chewing up the natural world and the <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764213495033" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lives and liberty of other human beings</a>. But I think what he got right, at least by implication, was the tendency of the Westward-ho settlers to play up their boldness and the manifest destiny of their efforts — and to understate how much they relied on regulations and government-maintained infrastructure.Like what, you ask? Well, then as now, the flow of information was as important as the flow of goods to maintain order and new settlements. As Cameron Blevins points out in his book "Paper Trails," by 1889 the government had set up an astounding 59,000 post offices covering 400,000 miles of routes, moving millions of letters and packages. (America today, by comparison, has only 100,000 gas stations and 15,800 Starbucks.)Or consider the railroads. Built, to be sure, by private concerns, they were still engines of the state. As Wolfgang Schivelbusch says in "The Railway Journey," the main difference between 19th-century railroad expansion in the US versus Europe was that the rail lines in Europe replaced existing transportation corridors — the carriage road, say, between London and Manchester. But in the US, almost all the new rail corridors were greenfield, crossing landscapes at best unfriendly to other modes of transportation. The railroads came before the destinations. It fell to the government, ultimately, to protect those new routes and the cities that grew up alongside them.There's more, of course — military bases, telegraph lines, national parks, land-ownership records, mining rights, the complicated and constantly revised laws covering territorial governance. Even <a href="https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09596111311301630/full/html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">taverns and inns</a>, the independent businesses that held together far-flung farmers and long-distance travelers, had government support — and regulatory guidance.<h2>Myths of the frontiers</h2>It's unfashionable for people in the tech industry to dispute the central role that <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/030801806X103343" target="_blank" rel="noopener">government-funded infrastructure and academic projects</a> have played in the development of Silicon Valley and the digital age. The hand of the feds touched atoms and bits. Cold War defense contracts and national labs developed the West's tech expertise; cheap utilities and well-maintained highways kept the machinery humming. Even before the government developed and supported the internet itself, it systematized and regulated the broadcast spectrum. Every iota of the tech industry's disruption stands on the shoulders of giant bureaucracies. The people who wanted the government to cover SVB deposits larger than $250,000 know all that. But they argued that they were different — that this time (unlike all the other times) their particular genius and particular value meant we could trust them to operate somewhat orthogonally to the rules, that we absolutely couldn't miss the opportunity to trust them. And yet here we are.The frontier myth and its related fairy tale, Jeffersonian agrarianism, idealize farmers and settlers as embodying the American spirit, living outside the rules yet still creating moral order from chaos. Last week, on social media, the great Western water reporter <a href="https://fediscience.org/@jfleck/110027906521902025" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Fleck shared</a> a 30-year-old <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf01530599" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paper</a> that gets at how these myths let those frontier heroes off the hook. They pocket whatever gold they manage to scrape from the hills, but this mythology lets them insist that anything that goes wrong is outside their control, a product of circumstance — and therefore something that the powers that be should fix, for the good of the nation.Shout down into Silicon Valley and you'll hear echoes of this same pioneer myth. Granted, its residents mostly filter the story not through the old-fashioned lens of agrarianism, but through futuristic stuff like asteroid mining, robots, and space colonies. They see themselves as heroes not of a Western frontier but of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-mars-longtermism-baby-sea-turtles-2022-3">space</a> — the Final one — as refracted by the legendary writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates — <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/sci-fi-icon-neal-stephenson-global-warming/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">they're all sci-fi fans</a>. And the golden-age stuff often has a real libertarian bent. In "Foundation," Isaac Asimov's brilliant technologists go on the run from a corroding Empire. Robert Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" features hardworking businessmen on the moon rebelling against their colonial governors, just as the American colonists did.A couple of smart analysts described this, way back in 1996, as the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09505439609526455" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Californian ideology</a>, a Jeffersonianism that replaces farmers with coders so that "social, political, and legal power structures will wither away to be replaced by unfettered interactions between autonomous individuals and their software." No more "counterproductive regulations"; engineers will invent tools like encryption and digital money to build "a 'free market' within cyberspace," created not by the government but according to the "primordial laws of nature."I want to be clear: Technologists really do innovate, and the government should support advances like railroads and electrification and the internet. It's good when the government can de-risk investments in the future, whether it's by insuring bank deposits or giving homeowners tax breaks to equip their homes with solar panels. And it's also good that technologists and their investors can cloak themselves in the beneficial parts of the frontier myth, venturing into the unknown to forge something new and better. I just think we should own up to what's going on here. We should celebrate this financial and ideological interconnectedness at the front end of innovation, instead of cold-shouldering it during Series A and then slinking back to ask for help only in times of crisis. The fact that we all have rights and responsibilities in a civil society is not a bug in our collective software. It's a feature.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/adam-rogers">Adam Rogers</a> is a senior correspondent at Insider.

The West was founded by whiny pioneers. Silicon Valley Bank is just the latest.

New Delhi, Jan 24 () Cautioning that non-performers will be shunted out through "compulsory retirement", Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Friday said delays in highway projects will not be tolerated and officials will have to pass the litmus test as their performances will be audited.
 The Road Transport and Highways Minister's remarks followed a two-day review of 740 highway projects totalling 28,304 km from 16 states in which every ongoing project was reviewed with a 360-degree view from all stakeholders.
 Senior officials of the ministry, NHAI, state governments, contractors, concessionaires, and consultants attended the review meeting. A target of highways building at a pace of 40 km/day by March 31, 2022, was also proposed.
 Speaking at the conclusion of the review meeting, Gadkari said, "Performance audit of each and every official will be done. Those found not performing up to the mark will be shown the exit through compulsory retirement as also said by the Prime Minister. However, good work will equally be rewarded." 
 He said the performance audit was more important than financial audit and there will be 15-20 parameters, including initiatives for resolving problems and fast-tracking projects, for such an audit.
 The minister said that the flagship expressway project Delhi-Mumbai Express Highway will be completed in three years. The work has already started on 18 out of 51 packages of the project.
 The project will usher in tribal and backward areas of Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat among other places with coming up of smart cities, education hubs and health clubs besides facilities for commuters and drivers.
 "The project will see way side amenities on every 50 km besides petrol pumps, hotels and restaurants and 10 lakh trees will be planted besides water harvesting and installation of solar powers," he said.
 He said the project on a new alignment has saved Rs 16,000 crore on land acquisition cost alone and will boost business and trade between Delhi and Mumbai.
 He said 22 greenfield corridors of length 7,500 km is being developed with a total capital cost of Rs 3 lakh crore.
 "Work has started on some while awarding all other projects are/ will be completed expeditiously. These projects are being pursued vigorously and are being implemented on priority," he said.
 He also informed that the progress of FASTags was also reviewed. All 537 Toll Plazas are now ETC enabled and more than 1.37 crore FASTags have been issued. My FASTag App has crossed 10 lakh down loads.
 The meeting led to identification of issues and way forward with clear timelines for most of the delayed projects, the minister said adding the major reasons found were delay in land acquisition by state governments, delay in regulatory clearances such as for quarrying etc.
 The minister said in case of stalling of projects on account of court or tribunal orders, NHAI and the Highways Ministry will put hoardings and banners informing people behind the reasons for delays.
 In addition, lack of coordination and communication between and within government agencies continues to delay the decision making.
 The issue of timely approval of Extension of Time (EOT) and change of scope (COS) was particularly raised by the Contractors/ Concessionaire during the meeting saying timely approvals would help in facilitating lending by banks.
 An on-line portal "GATI" was also launched and this will be closely monitored at the highest level.
 "NHAI portal will fast-track decision making and make it transparent. Stakeholders can place their problems on the portal which will be addressed," he said.
 A new internal initiative 'Review Mondays' was also announced under which meetings of officials on the first and the third Monday of every month will be held to focus on monitoring and review of projects. NAM MR

Officials to undergo performance audit; compulsory retirement for non-performers: Gadkari

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Good morning. Here's everything you need to know in the world of <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> today.1. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-just-had-some-layoffs-heres-why-2016-4">45 people at Facebook were just told to find new positions</a>.The staffers were part of the account management and sales teams responsible for LiveRail products within the company's "publisher ad tech group." LiveRail's former CEO, Mark Trefgarne, left Facebook on Friday.2. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-sundar-pichai-outlines-focus-in-founders-letter-2016-4">Google's vision of the future is a smart assistant that follows you everywhere.</a> The company is working towards creating a smart assistant that can follow you anywhere, according to this year's "Founders' Letter."3. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/comcast-is-acquiring-dreamworks-animation-2016-4">Comcast's NBCUniversal division is acquiring DreamWorks Animation in a $3.8 billion deal.</a> "DreamWorks will help us grow our film, television, theme parks, and consumer products businesses for years to come," said Steve Burke, the CEO of NBCUniversal.4. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-greenfield-from-btig-research-on-why-comcasts-dreamworks-acquisition-is-doomed-2016-4">7 reasons why Comcast acquiring DreamWorks is a terrible idea.</a> BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield penned an open letter to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts explaining why he thinks the deal will turn out to be a "mistake."5. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/the-uks-ad-regulator-is-cracking-down-on-adverts-that-stereotype-women-2016-4">The UK's ad regulator is cracking down on ads that stereotype women.</a> The Advertising Standards Authority is launching a formal investigation into "gender stereotyping" in advertising.6. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-sponsorship-has-and-hasnt-changed-since-the-london-2012-olympics-2016-4">How sponsorship has (and hasn't) changed since the London 2012 Olympics. </a>A cautionary approach is somewhat expected, given Olympic marketers have always been fearful of clashing with the Euros soccer tournament.7. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mountain-dew-kickstart-freak-chain-ad-2016-4">Mountain Dew is back with another surreal ad - this time there's a twerking cat.</a> Just like its "PuppyMonkeyBaby" Super Bowl spot, this ad has split opinions.8. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-security-guard-worried-about-marissa-mayer-2016-4">Even Yahoo's security guard is worried about Marissa Mayer.</a> In a telling anecdote from a recent Bloomberg feature on Yahoo, a security guard at Yahoo's New York office asked a reporter and editor, "unprompted," whether Mayer would stay in her job. When they asked the question back to him, the security guard "shook his head, grimaced, and tugged at his collar."9. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kfc-is-trialling-edible-bowls-2016-4">KFC is testing edible bowls made of tortilla.</a> The "India-first innovation" will be tested in Bangalore, a city in southern India, but may be rolled out globally if the trial proves successful.10. <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/amazon-plans-to-significantly-increase-investment-in-video-2016-4?r=US&amp;IR=T">Amazon plans to "significantly" increase investment in video as it goes to war with Netflix.</a> Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky stressed that the company is seeing better engagement and conversions from Prime members who use the video service <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/everyone-on-earth-jumps-at-the-same-time-2016-4">Here's what would happen if everyone on Earth jumped at the same time</a></h3> <div> <div> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="wzeXJ5MjE6vbznicq62bDqi0sFj_5sE1" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> </div> </div> </div>

The 10 things in advertising you need to know today

Here is how the Indian IT and Mobile industry reacted after yesterday’s session of Budget announcement 2014. 
 
Sunil Lalvani, Managing Director, <keyword id="6354356" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="BlackBerry">BlackBerry</keyword>, India “The budget is prudent and cautious even while it aims to address key sectoral concerns and brings in vital initiatives to spur growth especially in critical sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, education, skill development and infrastructure as well as assuring a stable tax and regulatory regime that is expected to incentivize <keyword id="6362476" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="40" keywordseo="investments">investments</keyword>. The budget also has significant focus in rolling out measures for rural development. From a consumer sentiment standpoint, the budget brings some relief around IT exemptions and is expected to accelerate savings that may fuel economic growth and consumer spending. Further impetus to innovation, entrepreneurship and focused development of industrial corridors will drive domestic employment generation and economic upliftment. Fostering growth and reducing fiscal deficit have been the cornerstone for this year’s budget. 
 
With technology as a key component for delivery of government services, mobile will be a key enabler. M2M technologies will be vital to realize the government’s vision of 100 smart cities, as well enhancing the delivery of healthcare and education services. We believe these are positive signs that will transform the standard of healthcare, education and urban living, as IoT becomes a reality. 
 
Further, domestic manufacturing will receive likely boost as the government enhances focus on this sector. Overall a progressive budget that aims to instill investor confidence and propel economic growth.” 
 
Bhaskar Pramanik, <keyword id="6364480" type="POSITION" weightage="40" keywordseo="Chairman">Chairman</keyword>, <keyword id="10387" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Microsoft">Microsoft</keyword> India 
“There were five specific priorities that I was looking for to be addressed in this maiden budget by the new Government - ubiquitous use of technology for inclusive growth, enhancing the education ecosystem, promoting a tax regime that is stable and growth oriented, focus on the start-up ecosystem and greater impetus to the manufacturing sector. It is heartening to note that the budget has provided the right direction on these. 
 
India’s transformation has to be powered by technology - this is well recognized by the Government and has been articulated in the various initiatives in the Budget. I see this budget setting the stage for higher growth on strong fundamentals of manufacturing and infrastructure sectors, built on the backbone of technology.” 
 
Sanjay Rohatgi, President - Sales, India, <keyword id="111839" type="CITY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Symantec">Symantec</keyword> “The <keyword id="6355261" type="POSITION" weightage="40" keywordseo="Finance-minister">Finance Minister</keyword> has presented a forward-looking budget. 'Technology for Governance' seems to be the new mantra here. This has instilled a great deal of excitement in the technology sector with an array of opportunities. We are particularly thrilled with the Government’s all-encompassing initiative themed ‘Digital India’ which clearly enunciates a clear action plan for last mile internet connectivity, better access to services, as well as IT skills development of local talent. This is being further reinforced with outstanding proposals for massive investments in greenfield infrastructure projects such as smart cities; youth-focused programs like establishing new IITs and developing a conducive environment for entrepreneurship. These are extremely positive and encouraging steps and we sense that a protected and secure information infrastructure will be the backbone for inclusive growth and development. It’s an environment Symantec will look forward to work and partner in.”

Budget 2014 Reactions By The Indian Mobile And IT Industry -
BlackBerry, Microsoft And Symantec

Modi Government is about to complete one year in office and one year is a significant time for understanding the intent and to some extent the performance of any government. <keyword id="2403978" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="The-Modi-government">The Modi government</keyword> had won the election on the plank of development and its promise to bring ‘acche din’. The article tries to trace some of the promises that were made and the performance of the government during the previous year under various broad themes. 
 
Economy- The government has been helped by what a prominent editor termed ‘acche sitare’, ‘good luck’. It is no doubt true that fall in commodity prices in general and crude oil, in particular, helped the government reign in the <keyword id="6365485" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="fiscal-deficit">fiscal deficit</keyword> and give it headway to make fiscal policies for the country. The fiscal deficit target for 2015-16 has been the pegged by the budget to 3.9%. While this is little above than recommendations of the Fourteenth <keyword id="74136" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="finance-commission">Finance Commission</keyword> ( which recommended it to be 3.6 percent of the <keyword id="35050" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="gdp">GDP</keyword>), the government has understandably batted for growth. The government still is slowly but surely moving towards the limit set by FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budgetary Management) Act, 2003 that pegged the target at a maximum level of 3% of the GDP. The government has also tried to help the <keyword id="34412" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="economy">economy</keyword> gain momentum by enabling legislation for reforms. These included trying to go in for a major reform in the indirect taxation regime as well as accepting the recommendations of Fourteenth <keyword id="25455" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="finance">Finance</keyword> Commission in respect to revenue sharing with states. It was ostensibly done to ensure a spirit of ‘cooperative federalism’ between states and center, as well as greater financial devolution to states. The figure now stands at 42% of the total revenue collection up from the earlier 32%. Also, the year saw growth forecasts been revised for India by a number of International Bodies and agencies. The IMF revised its forecasts to 7.5 % In 2015 in its WEO April 2015 forecast. It was up from the 6.4 projected for 2015 in the WEO April 2014 forecast. Similarly, the Asian Development Bank in its Asian Development Outlook 2015, indicated a bettering economy with less than 5 percent core <keyword id="22195" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Inflation">inflation</keyword>. They also alluded to the new monetary policy framework according to which RBI, India's central bank is to play the role of price stabilization primarily while being mindful of growth. With the policy framework in place, the central bank will be maintaining the inflation target of 4±2 % from FY 2016 onwards. Thus with an overall bettering situation a total score of 7.5 out of 10. 
 
Foreign Engagement and Defence- Foreign engagement was by far the area where the most vigorous activity and keen intent were observed. The sphere saw initiatives undertaken by the PM himself to make India more noticeable as well as more integrated with the International sphere. It included among many things, trips to foreign countries both in the neighbourhood as well as to countries like Germany, France, Australia, US, Canada and most recently beginning May 14, 2015 his trip to China. The engagement also saw a large number of foreign dignitaries coming to India from across the world. The engagement also saw bilateral agreements as well as plans to invest in India's development by countries and companies abroad, most notably by Japan, US and China. Also, steps to resolve contentious issues have been undertaken pertaining to the border areas with neighbours. It includes the recently passed Bangladesh Land Accord Bill that envisages transferring enclaves and demarcation of the boundary along the present porous borders. Also, in the broad sphere of defence the decision to acquire 36 Rafale fighter jets is a welcome step. More such acquisitions will have to be made since these 36 planes would add just two squadrons to thirty-five squadrons that IAF has. It is below an authorized strength of forty-two which will be down to twenty- five by 2022. It means we must speed up the process of defense acquisitions since there is urgent need to upgrade and modernize the armed forces and security apparatus in India. Overall a score of 8.5 out of 10 foreign engagement and 7.5 out of 10 on defence. 
 
 
Agriculture- Here the government has not been able to do that well, and it is understandable because there has been erratic weather accentuated by some mismanagement by the government. The sector is critical as most people are dependent on it for employment. Added to the weather were the issues of land acquisition and urea availability to farmers. Land Acquisition Bill though being blocked by the opposition on the farmer rights plank is linked directly to the development of clusters and employment of youth for especially rural areas. The focus of the government seems to be the development of irrigation facilities under its Pradhanmantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. A fund was proposed to be set up for marginalized farmers with a corpus of Rs. 25000 crores in NABARD. An overall score of 6.5 on 10. 
 
Industrial policy and power- Industrial policy saw a continuity from the previous regime. The National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) was hailed by the 'Make in India' as the 'most comprehensive and significant policy initiative of the government'. The 'Make in India' is an initiative that is critically dependent on other factors. These include availability of land, ease of doing business as well as removal of inverse duty structures that make imports of finished products cheaper than finished products. Apart from this labour policies that favour flexibility in hiring and firing are also seen to be the main bottlenecks. While the government has taken some steps to rectify, these bottlenecks outcomes are yet to be seen. Similarly, the <keyword id="44528" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="FDI">FDI</keyword> policy has seen incremental reforms with the opening up of <keyword id="35450" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="insurance">insurance</keyword> and defence sectors further to 49% from the earlier limit of 26%. Both these are positive steps for the economy. Greater structural changes could have been undertaken in these spheres especially with the mandate, but nonetheless significant work is been done. In the power sector, much has been achieved. It included the successful auction of the coal mines, which is slated to rope in a massive 15 lakh crore over the 30-year timeframe if all the mines are auctioned and are working at optimum output. Apart from this coal production was at an all-time high as well as the government seems on track to meet the power requirements of the country. Overall a score of 6.5 for industries and a score of 8 for power out of 10. 
 
Education- The countries' education system can broadly be classified under two broad areas- higher education and school education. There are several schemes that are operational under these. The government in the past one-year has come up with several new initiatives including the Beti-Bachao Beti Padhao Abhiyan, Swachh Vidyalaya and GIS Mapping of schools and has opened several new institutions. However, the fact remains that despite all government’s initiatives most people if given a choice, prefer private schooling since it gives their children a competitive edge later on in their careers. The governments of the past have failed in this and correcting this anomaly will take time. Also, in respect to higher education the government seems keen to have holistic development with several new AIIMS, IIM and IIT like institutions being opened in states that have a paucity of these. What remains to seen is how quality and not just quantity is pursued within these institutions while ensuring regional development. An overall score of 6.5 on 10. 
 
Infrastructure- The primary focus of the government in this sphere is up-gradation of existing and quick development of new infrastructure. The first can be observed in the push for railway up-gradation and improvement in customer service. The second can be observed more in the highways sector with the minister setting himself a target of 30 km a day by 2017. In March this year 11 km of roads were being laid. The broad ambit of infrastructure covers the development of roads, highways, ports, airport, waterways, canals, and railways. It is too early to judge the government's progress on the same however the fact that there is clearance for projects worth close to Rs. 6 lakh Crore across 10 key sectors. It shows intent on the part of government for infrastructure development. Overall a score of 7.5 on 10. 
 
Social Schemes- The social schemes of the government have been particularly impressive. These include the <keyword id="2494045" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="jan-dhan">Jan Dhan</keyword> Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Jivan Jyoti Bima Yojana (PMJJBY) Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY) and Atal Pension Yojana and many other social missions like the <keyword id="6562839" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Swacch-Bharat-Mission">Swacch Bharat Mission</keyword> and the Clean Ganga Mission. For the Jan Dhan Yojana already around 12.5 crore accounts have been opened along with a capital infusion of Rs 10,500 crore into the system. The three recently launched social security schemes (namely the (PMJJBY), Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana ) and Atal Pension Yojana) have got nearly 6.5 crore subscriptions. It is because (PMJJBY) scheme offers Rs. 2 lakh cover for a mere 330 Rs. Per year (provided bank account holders are from age 18-50). Under the (PMSBY), renewable one-year accident cum disability cover of Rs. 2 lakh is provided for Rs.12 premium every year. The Atal Pension Yojana is aimed at those people who work in the unorganised sector and do not fall under the ambit of regular pension. The scheme offers pension under various brackets depending on the contribution made over a period. The scheme is for people in the age bracket 18-40 years. The social focus of the government is also evident from the fact the government has continued with previous schemes and linked them with technology for targeted interventions. The JAM (Jan Dhan Account, Aadhaar Cards and Mobiles) number Trinity as mentioned in the budget speech is an example of the same. The government seems to have a social focus for benefit to poor. An overall score of 8 on 10. 
 
Urbanization and Urban development- The urbanization and urban development received an increased thrust under the 100 Smart City project. The thrust of the present government is not only on up gradation of brownfield cities but also development of new greenfield cities. Traditionally, India has been slow to urbanize, and at present 32 percent of people reside in urban areas. However, the quality of urban life has seen a precipitous decline in the past few decades. The government's smart city initiative is a step aimed at understanding and absorbing the migration of people from rural to urban areas. However, the implementation of the project holds the key. Success in greenfield development is critically linked to land acquisition. Also, will the 'smart cities' improve liveability for the ever-burgeoning population remains to be seen? The project is ambitious in scope and the past year has seen some activity with the launch of the GIFT city in Gujarat and work on cities of DMIDC. An overall score of 6.5 on 10. 
 
Health and Environment- Health along with education have been two areas where successive governments have faltered. The system in India needs a drastic overhaul and increased spending by the government. Also there is a severe shortage of trained personnel in the sector. Add to this the decrepit facilities in rural areas that forces one to look at ways and means to better delivery. The activity in the health ministry was seen to be rather subdued. However, the taxation on cigarettes ensures that a majority of population reconsiders decision to buy cigarettes. The quality of air and the general pollution levels in Indian cities pose serious health issues for all residents. Disease patterns are also changing and this calls for a comprehensive approach to healthcare access and delivery. Not much has been done in this regard. An overall score of 6 on 10. 
 
<keyword id="107737" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="80" keywordseo="Entrepreneurship">Entrepreneurship</keyword> and Employment- For the first time a separate ministry for entrepreneurship has seen the light of the day. This fact along with the fact that skilling are the main thrust areas of the ministry make it clear that the government is in sync with the present ground reality. A million people will enter the workforce every month over the next decade. So it becomes imperative that India produces jobs for its burgeoning workforce. That will not just come from formal and informal sector but will require a thrust for entrepreneurship. Similarly, thrust for skilling is imperative. Further, a draft policy on skill development and entrepreneurship has already been made and put out for public consultation. Though much remains to be seen in terms of its impact the direction and intent, in this case, seems to be spot on. An overall score of 7.5 on 10. 
 
Overall, in assessing the performance, the government seems to have taken cognizance of the major challenges facing India in multiple spheres and taken requisite steps. It seems to be headed in the right direction. It augurs well for India in the medium to long term. Much will depend on the speed of legislation, decision-making and implementation over the next four years. 
 
(Dr. Amit Kapoor is President and CEO of India Council on Competitiveness and Honorary Chairman of Institute for Competitiveness, India. He tweets @kautiliya and can be contacted at <a href="mailto:amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in">amit.kapoor@competitiveness.in</a>. The article is co-authored with Sankalp Sharma who is Senior Researcher at Institute for Competitiveness)

Assessing one year of Modi
Government: 6/10 leaving scope for major improvement

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div><ul><li>The video startup Cheddar just announced $22 million in new funding and a $160 million valuation, which is eye-opening considering the gloomy mood in digital <keyword id="6354777" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Media">media</keyword> overall.</li><li>Even more impressive is that unlike many digital startups, Cheddar's audience appears to be relatively small. </li><li>And given the way Cheddar is distributed, it's also very hard to measure.&#xa0;Founder Jon Steinberg said that his bar is relatively low.&#xa0; </li><li>He looks toward the financial news category, where CNBC's daily live shows regularly attract less than 200,000 viewers.&#xa0;"All I need is a quarter of that," he said.</li><li>He's pushing for better research, and sees an opportunity to own business news on the emerging set of "skinny bundle" cable TV alternatives.</li></ul>Nobody seems to have a clear idea of how many people actually watch Cheddar. And that probably doesn't matter.The web video startup, which aspires to become the business news outlet of record for millennials, has just pulled in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/cheddar-the-cnbc-for-millennials-raises-22-million-for-international-expansion-1521487261">another $22 million in funding</a> &#xa0;- bringing its total to $54 million overall - landing the company an impressive $160 million valuation after just two years.Those numbers are eye-opening, particularly in light of the recent fallout in digital media. The fuzzyier math: How many people are actually watching Cheddar?It's tough to gauge. Even founder Jon Steinberg says so.Nielsen and comScore don't seem to have an answer. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/olympic-streaming-shows-data-on-digital-tv-audiences-is-hard-to-track-2018-2">If the biggest TV networks in the US are having a hard time measuring how many people watch their shows on multiple devices and app</a>s, consider that Cheddar produces live eight hours a day on several fledgling streaming services, including Sling TV and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/philo-ditches-sports-to-introduce-a-16-per-month-live-tv-service/">Philo</a>, while also distributing live and on demand clips for Facebook and Twitter.It's also distributed on YouTube, Pluto TV, Xumo, and even at some airports. Can anybody come up with a rating number that captures all of that?According to the analytics firm Tubular Labs,&#xa0;Cheddar had close to 500 million video on Facebook views in the last 90 days.&#xa0;One clip, featuring a demonstration of a clothes-folding product, has generated nearly 100 million views.To its credit, Cheddar's main Facebook page has nearly 3 million followers, while its Twitter page has nearly 150,000.At the same time, it's easy to find individual live clips on Facebook or Twitter that generate under 50,000 viewers&#xa0;Then there's Cheddar's distribution on various skinny bundles. MoffettNathanson Research estimates that 4.6 million people had signed on to these services by the end of 2017.<h2>Targeting the "skinny bundle" crowd</h2>Steinberg said that while Cheddar initially focused on Facebook, particularly Facebook Live, the plan was always to focus on the emerging "over the top" (OTT) opportunity."We knew we wanted to get out of Facebook because we knew Facebook was going to screw publishers," he said. "We needed some Park Avenue real estate."His thinking: As media and tech giants like DirecTV and Hulu and PlayStation and YouTube have readied scaled down cable TV alternatives known as<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/streaming-services-comparison-hulu-youtube-tv-sling-directv-now-playstation-vue-fubo-2017-8">&#xa0;"skinny bundles,"</a>&#xa0;there would be an opening for a cheaper alternative.Networks like CNBC and Fox are used to commanding high monthly carriage fees from cable distributors. Cheddar would come in cheap. "If they are getting a dollar per subscription, we'd offer 25 cents," he said.Instead, the skinny bundle companies said they'd be happy to carry Cheddar - but weren't interested in paying for that right. "So I was back in the <keyword id="35666" type="COMPANY" weightage="100" keywordseo="advertising">advertising</keyword> business," Steinberg said.He says by the end of this year, Cheddar will have distribution on every skinny bundle, and will pull in $40 million to $50 million in ad revenue by next year.<h2>Does a huge audience matter for a media company anymore?</h2>What's striking about Cheddar's funding announcement is that it came during a time when companies like Refinery29, Mashable, Vice, and BuzzFeed are all going through cutbacks.And the news didn't contain any claims that Cheddar reaches 100s of millions of unique users. It surely doesn't.Instead, Steinberg said that his bar is relatively low.&#xa0; He looks toward that financial news category, where CNBC's daily live shows regularly attract less than 200,000 viewers. And the average age of their audience is much older than Cheddar, Steinberg says."All I need is a quarter of that," he said. "That network pulls in close to a billion a year."He's got a point. Nielsen says that CNBC's average daytime audience is only around 30,000 viewers between the ages of 25 and 54. According to S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence, CNBC will pull in $778 million this year.Is that enough to excite investors, who like to see fast scaling revenue and dream of big exits? What is it about Cheddar?Some point to Cheddar's fandom.According to CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool, in February Cheddar's videos generated over 3 million interactions, which is more than CNBC, Bloomberg, and yes, Business Insider. That kind of interaction (shares, comments, likes) is typically seen as sign of audience devotion."Building a brand on the internet is hard," said media analyst Rich Greenfield. "Cheddar is trying to define the news category in video online.&#xa0;We all know the legacy ecosystem breaking down."Greenfield cited other digital brands like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/erika-nardini-ceo-barstool-sports-2018-2">Barstool Sports</a>. It's a good example of a company that is far smaller audience wise than ESPN, but has been exploding in terms of its profile."It's unclear if Cheddar can be a unicorn, but significant value can be created by the brand. They are a beachhead to build a multi-platform media business."&#xa0;It's an advantage that Cheddar doesn't have legacy costs or infrastructure, argued&#xa0;Farhad Massoudi, founder and CEO of the ad-supported video hub Tubi TV."I do think there's a business opportunity to produce news content and distribute it everywhere, and not be locked into traditional news deals," he said. "They've also done a good job of managing to keep the production costs low.""Cheddar is the leader in live digital news video, and owns all its IP," said Simon Freer, chief commercial officer of Liberty Global's content investments arm, which participated in the most recent funding round. "We believe Cheddar can go global, and we are excited to collaborate with the company to make that a reality."It's almost as if what matters to investors now is that Cheddar has built distribution, the ability to produce large volumes of content, and a name. Amassing a significant audience is a secondary concern.<h2>Still, the Cheddar haters are out there</h2>There's little question that Cheddar has become Cheddar in large part due to Steinberg's self-promotion, dealmaking prowess, and connections in the media and ad world."He's a real hustler," said one digital ad industry veteran. "I've never seen somebody so transparently trying to sell a business. One thing he's got going for him is the dynamic of anybody will say anything if you stick a camera in their face. But I don't know if 21-year olds want to watch this."Steinberg definitely has a showman side, which some people love, and some don't. He posts <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BcNDMmMlQ89/?hl=en&amp;taken-by=jonsteinberg">personal workout videos on Instagram and wears funny hats while on Cheddar.</a>&#xa0;He's known for putting together splashy press events, like an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/business/media/snapchat-joins-daily-mail-and-wpp-agency-in-marketing-venture.html">announcement on a yacht in Cannes a few years ago that he, WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell and Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel were launching a new social ad agency dubbed Truffle Pig.</a>Steinberg says he loves making deals. Sometimes that results in landing huge sponsors. In other cases, that's meant bum deals, like spending $26 million to acquire Elite Daily while he was running Daily Mail's North American operations. That deal became a big money loser for Daily Mail's parent company, <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/2017/04/elite-daily-lost-a-ton-of-money-but-bustle-just-bought-it-from-the-daily-mail-anyway/">which eventually unloaded the property.</a>For his part, Steinberg said he's not actively looking to sell Cheddar. "I just raised $22 million."The other knock on Cheddar is that it's live during an era where young people want everything on demand. "I don't think live TV makes any sense," said a source. "That's dead."To be sure, Cheddar is pushing into more non-newsy content. And its live footage can easily be turned into clips for the web.<h2>Friends like these</h2>And yes, Steinberg has surely used his connections to land guests such as WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorell and CBS CEO <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cheddar/videos/1668513690136029/">Les Mooves</a>. But he bristled at the idea that Cheddar is just his Rolodex."These are not all my friends," he said. "We book 30 or 40 people a day. We had Drew Barrymore the other day. She's not my friend. We had [former US Vice Presidential candidate <a href="https://twitter.com/cheddar/status/885642514694197249">Tim Kaine</a>."<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Going forward, Steinberg said that he'd welcome getting Cheddar on traditional cable packages, and he's interested in getting distribution via local broadcast stations.He also sees an opening as some smaller local cable companies appear to<a href="https://www.fiercecable.com/cable/cable-one-margins-at-47-q4-highest-cable-industry-cfo-coyle-says"> be shifting their focus to becoming primarily broadband providers</a>, given how high the profit margins are. Perhaps Cheddar could provide video content for those services for a much lower cost, letting cable companies focus on broadband, his theory goes.Steinberg acknowledges that big names and deals will only take Cheddar so far in the near term. For there's one group that will care about measuring Cheddar's audience. That's advertisers.To ramp up ad revenue, Steinberg's talking to Google about testing "dynamic ads" that could be delivered automatically during breaks in Cheddar's live streams. In the meantime, he's pushing hard for better third party research that will please ad buyers."We get very limited data from the skinny bundles and are prohibited from sharing," he said. He's hired the research company Cogent, which is also used by CNBC, to help track viewership on streaming services, "at great cost to us."According to Cogent, Cheddar viewership has already climbed to 10% among US millennials.&#xa0;In addition, upstart streaming web platforms like Pluto TV and Xumo add in another million plus viewers, Steinberg says.Cheddar says that overall, "hundreds of thousands watch Cheddar live each day and hundreds of millions watch Cheddar video clips on social media monthly."But Steinberg seems to realize this hodge podge of data won't be enough for big marketers long term. It's hard to plug these numbers into a chart and compare them to live TV audiences.So he's pushing for Nielsen to come up with a solution.&#xa0;"It will probably cost me an arm and a leg," he said. "But I'm dying for it. If I can get Nielsen to measure us, even if the average viewership they come up with is 5,000 people, our whole audience is in its 20s and 30s. And we are two-years old. That would be victory."<a href="http://read.bi/future-of-media"></a><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/journalist-vegas-tenold-investigated-neo-nazis-for-six-years-2018-3">Neo-Nazi groups let a journalist in their meetings and rallies - here's what he saw</a></h3> <div> </div> </div></hr>

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