Latest news with #Assam
Times of Oman
13 hours ago
- Business
- Times of Oman
"Very soon we'll see the first Made-in-India chip": Ashwini Vaishnaw
Bengaluru: Union Information and Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday said that the country would witness the rollout of its first made-in-India chip "very soon" as six semiconductor plants are under construction in Gujarat, Assam and Uttar Pradesh. Addressing the 'Next-Gen Mobility for a Next-Gen City' programme here, the IT Minister said, "Today there are six semiconductor plants under construction in our country and very soon we'll see the first made in India chip roll out of these factories." Emphasising the government's resolve for the easy accessibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, he said, "AI is shaping our world today. Our Prime Minister's vision is of democratising technology. It should be accessible to all. It should not be limited to a few. It should be available to all. That's why we have done the India AI mission in which 34,000 GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) are available today as a common compute facility for all our innovators." "The price of these GPUs is just less than USD 1 per hour. And this is the most affordable common computer facility in the entire world," the Minister added. Speaking at the same event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also emphasised India's priority to become "self-reliant" in the technology sector, stating that the country will soon have its "Made in India" chip as the semiconductor mission gains momentum. PM stressed that the journey of "Viksit Bharat" will move forward hand in hand with the Digital India initiative. He noted that with the India AI Mission, the country is advancing towards global AI leadership. "Our next big priority should be becoming self-reliant in technology. The journey to a Viksit Bharat will move forward hand in hand with Digital India. Through initiatives like the India AI Mission, India is advancing toward global AI leadership. He added that the Semiconductor Mission is also gaining momentum, and India will soon have its own Made-in-India chip", PM Modi said. In May, the Union Cabinet approved India's sixth semiconductor manufacturing unit in Jewar in western Uttar Pradesh. It will be established near Jewar Airport through a joint venture between the HCL Group and Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn. The sixth unit is expected to generate employment for around 2,000 people and will help significantly in strengthening India's semiconductor ecosystem. The unit at Jewar will have a 20,000 wafers per month capacity, and the chips will have 36 million (3.6 crore) per month. Among other five semiconductor plants, four are in Gujarat: Tata Electronics–PSMC Semiconductor fab, CG Power–Renesas–Stars Microelectronics ATMP unit , Micron Technology's ATMP unit and Kaynes Semicon ATMP unit, while the Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test (TSAT) Unit is in Assam. In 2024, the Government of India launched a comprehensive initiative called the India AI Mission aimed at positioning India as a global hub for artificial intelligence (AI) research, innovation, and adoption. The mission focuses on developing AI solutions across key sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities, and infrastructure to drive socio-economic growth. The strategy includes capacity building, development of research ecosystems, and partnerships between government, industry, and academia. The government has also approved the Semicon India programme with a total outlay of Rs 76,000 crore for the development of a semiconductor and display manufacturing ecosystem in the country. On the other hand, to promote the semiconductor ecosystem, the central government, in June, introduced pioneering reforms in the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) rules. The reforms aim to address the specialised needs of the semiconductor and electronics component manufacturing sectors. Since manufacturing in these sectors is highly capital-intensive, import-dependent and involves longer gestation periods before turning profitable, rule amendments have been carried out to promote pioneering investments and boost manufacturing in these high-technology sectors. Going further, Vaishnaw informed that India has become the top supplier of smartphones to the United States, with electronics manufacturing now worth Rs 12 lakh crore. He said that India's electronic production has grown six times in the last 11 years. The Minister further pointed out the exponential rise in electronic exports, which have increased eightfold to reach 3 lakh crore rupees. Vaishnaw also noted India's position as the world's second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones, underscoring the country's expanding role in the global electronics market. "Our electronic production has grown 6 times in the last 11 years. Today, electronics manufacturing has touched 12 lakh crore rupees. Electronic exports have increased by 8 times... Today, it has grown to 3 lakh crore rupees. India has become the second-largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world" he said. According to official government data, India has made significant progress in mobile and electronics manufacturing, becoming the world's 2nd largest mobile manufacturing country. In 2014, India had only 2 mobile manufacturing units, but fast forward to today, the nation boasts over 300 manufacturing units, underscoring a significant expansion in this vital sector. In 2014 -15 only 26 per cent of the mobile phones which were being sold in India were made in India, the rest were being imported. It is worth mentioning that today, 99.2 per cent of all mobile phones which are sold in India are made in India. The manufacturing value of mobile phones has surged from Rs 18,900 crore in FY14 to a staggering Rs 4,22,000 crore in FY24.
New York Times
a day ago
- Politics
- New York Times
In India, Immigration Raids Detain Thousands and Create a Climate of Fear
A waste picker from a Delhi slum, who said he had been deported with his pregnant wife and son. A rice farmer in Assam, in India's northeastern corner, who said his mother had been detained by police for weeks. A 60‑year‑old shrine attendant in the western state of Gujarat, who said he had been blindfolded, beaten by the police and then put on a boat. All have been caught up in a widening crackdown on migrants that the Indian government has justified as a national security imperative. Rights groups say the crackdown, which intensified after a terrorist attack in Kashmir in April, has become an increasingly arbitrary campaign of fear against Muslims in India, especially those whose language might mark them as outsiders. Most of those detained in the raids live hundreds of miles from Pakistan, which India has blamed for the attack. Thousands of Indian Bengali-speakers, most of them Muslims, have been rounded up, detained or expelled to Bangladesh. Many of them are from West Bengal, an eastern Indian state where Bengali is the main language; for decades, young people from the state have migrated to big Indian cities elsewhere for work. Several million undocumented Bangladeshis are thought to live in India, entering — legally or illegally — through the porous border that divides the two nations. Indian states have carried out raids on neighborhoods with dense concentrations of Bengali speakers, saying they had evidence of undocumented immigrants there. (Bengali, an official language of both India and Bangladesh, is spoken by tens of millions of people on both sides of the border.) Since mid-July, authorities in Gurgaon, a satellite city of the capital, New Delhi, have conducted what they call a verification drive, intended to identify illegal immigrants. The police in Gurgaon have detained and then released hundreds of people with documents showing they lived legally in India, according to local media reports. Hundreds of mostly poor Bengali speakers, the reports said, preemptively fled the city after the drive began, worried they would be picked up by the police at any moment. Between 200 and 250 people have been detained in the verification drive and ten were identified as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, said Sandeep Kumar, a public relations officer for the Gurgaon police department. He said claims of people fleeing the city were 'rumors.' In interviews with a dozen people across four Indian states, in neighborhoods that have been raided by the police, Muslim and Hindu Bengali speakers said they had become scared of being caught in the government's crackdown. Avjit Paul, 18, who is Hindu, said he moved to Gurgaon from his home state of West Bengal to work as a cleaner. When his slum was raided, he said, he was detained for five days by the city police, despite showing the officers a state ID card. He was released from police custody only after social workers offered the police additional documents to support his Indian nationality, he said. Millions of Indians lack documentation that could prove their citizenship. Terrified of being detained again, Mr. Paul fled Gurgaon and returned to West Bengal. 'I'm afraid to be caught again like this, because I speak Bengali,' said Mr. Paul, who is now jobless. Rights groups and lawyers have criticized the government's immigration crackdown for a lack of due process. They say that the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., has used April's act of terrorism as a pretext to deepen a systemic campaign of oppression against the country's Muslims. Across Indian states led by the B.J.P., thousands of purportedly Rohingya or Bangladeshi Muslims have been rounded up since the attack. At least 6,500 people were detained in Gujarat, 2,000 in Kashmir and about 250 in Rajasthan, according to the police in each state. Rajasthan set up three new detention centers in May. Supantha Sinha, a lawyer working on detention cases in the city, said the number was closer to 1,000. The exact number of people expelled from India to Bangladesh is unclear. Bangladeshi officials said that roughly 2,000 people were pushed into Bangladesh from India from May to July, but the Indian authorities have not confirmed a figure. The Indian government has had to readmit dozens of people who proved their Indian citizenship after being expelled across the border, according to a report released in July by Human Rights Watch. The government's crackdown has largely targeted Muslim migrant workers from impoverished backgrounds, according to Meenakshi Ganguly, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. Amer Sheikh, 59, left his home in West Bengal to work in construction in the western state of Rajasthan. Police detained him in June, despite his state ID card and birth certificate, his uncle Ajmaul Sheikh said. After three days in custody, the family lost contact with him. In late June, Danish Sheikh, a 27-year-old waste collector born in West Bengal, was detained by police, along with his pregnant wife and 8-year-old son. After five days in custody, Mr. Sheikh said, the family was deported, left in a jungle and told to walk to Bangladesh. They have been stuck there since, despite having familial land records in India that date back several decades and Indian IDs. 'We don't know when we can go home,' said Sunali Khatun, Mr. Sheikh's wife. Imran Hossain, 60, said he was blindfolded, beaten and put on a five-day boat ride to Bangladesh after Indian police officers raided his neighborhood in the western state of Gujarat. He has struggled to sleep at night. 'I still hear people crying when I try to sleep,' Mr. Hossain said. B.J.P. leaders at both the state and national levels have long described a crisis of 'infiltrators' from Bangladesh threatening India's identity, homing in on border states like Assam. The state's chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, warned in an X post in July about an 'alarming demographic shift,' pledging his state was 'fearlessly resisting the ongoing, unchecked Muslim infiltration across the border.' In Assam, about one-third of the population is Muslim, and the issue of Bengali-speaking identity has been a trouble point for decades. In the state's latest deportation drive, Mr. Sarma invoked a 1950 law that allows the state to deport suspected illegal immigrants, bypassing established tribunals. 'It's absolutely terrifying,' said Mohsin Bhat, a lawyer who has researched citizenship trials in Assam. Malek Oster, a rice farmer who lives in Assam, has spent the past weeks wondering how to get his mother out of government detention. She was taken by the police in early June, he said, and the police will not disclose to him where she is. 'My mother has a voter card, Aadhar card, and the ration card, but the police did not accept that, and we don't know why,' Mr. Oster said, referring to the national ID system. Mr. Oster said his family had never been to Bangladesh. But like many Bengali speakers in India, he increasingly feels like an outsider. 'Due to the crackdown, I fear speaking Bengali when I go outside,' he said. Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.
Arab News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Arab News
Bengali Muslims fear detention amid immigration crackdown in India
NEW DELHI: Bengali-speaking Muslims in India say they are living in fear of detention and deportation amid an increasing police crackdown on 'illegal immigrants' that have seen hundreds being unlawfully forced into Bangladesh, despite many being Indian citizens. More than 1,500 Muslim men, women and children were expelled across the border between May 7 and June 15 without due process, according to a July report by Human Rights Watch, citing Bangladeshi authorities. While crackdowns on alleged illegal immigrants from Muslim-majority Bangladesh are not new in India, the current wave followed a deadly attack in Jammu and Kashmir in April, where gunmen opened fire on visitors at a popular Himalayan tourist hotspot, killing 26 people and critically injuring many others. As Delhi blamed the attack on 'terrorists' from Pakistan, Indian states governed by officials from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have since rounded up thousands of Bengali Muslims, calling them suspected 'illegal immigrants' and a potential security risk. Khairul Islam, a 53-year-old Indian citizen and former schoolteacher from Assam state, told Arab News he was detained at his home by the police on May 24, and then forced into Bangladesh with 14 other people. 'It was a horrible experience, I was pushed into a no-man's-land between India and Bangladesh. When I tried to enter India the Indian border guards started firing rubber bullets,' he said. Islam was able to return about a week later, after his wife and relatives showed Indian authorities documents to prove his citizenship. 'My grandfather was from India. I have a copy of his schooling in India. His eighth-standard certificate. My father got a gun license from the government in 1952. I was a government employee and got a job as a teacher in 1997,' he said. 'This is simple harassment. Being a Bengali Muslim has become a crime in Assam. Our life has turned into a hell … They call me a foreigner just because I am a Muslim and a Bengali. Many families have been destroyed in this witch hunt … I hope justice will be done to us.' While Bengali is the main language of Bangladesh, there are an estimated 100 million Bengali speakers in India, who mainly reside in the states of Assam, West Bengal, and Tripura. About 35 million of them identify as Muslims. Authorities in Hindu-majority India have claimed that the expulsions were conducted to reverse irregular migration, with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma saying that 'Muslim infiltration' from Bangladesh is threatening India's identity. 'We are fearlessly resisting the ongoing, unchecked Muslim infiltration from across the border, which has already caused an alarming demographic shift. In several districts, Hindus are now on the verge of becoming a minority in their own land,' he wrote on X on July 29. Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said India's approach to undocumented migrants is showing the country in a poor light. 'While governments can tackle irregular immigration, it has to be done with due process, as opposed to randomly rounding up Bengali-speaking Muslim workers in various BJP-governed states, and assuming that they are Bangladeshi nationals,' she told Arab News. States like Assam have also seen a recent surge in evictions of thousands of families who Indian authorities accuse of staying illegally on government land. 'The ongoing evictions seem like a state policy to discriminate on religious or ethnic grounds, violating constitutional protections,' Ganguly said. Assam residents like Shaji Ali, who was evicted from his home in Golaghat district, are also questioning the official narrative. 'I was born here. My father came here from Naogaon district (in Bangladesh) more than 40 years ago. It was the previous government that settled us here. 'We have all the government facilities here. How did we become encroachers?' he told Arab News. 'For the (current) government, our Bengali-Muslim identity is a problem.' Minnatul Islam, secretary of the All Assam Minority Students Union, believes that politics is behind the ongoing clampdown. 'An inhumane situation is prevailing in Assam today. Bengali-speaking Muslims are living in great fear … This is a political move and the government of Assam is preparing for the 2026 elections and the eviction is part of the electoral agenda,' he told Arab News. 'The target is Bengali-speaking Muslims. There would be around 9 million Bengali Muslims. It's clear that there is no Bangladeshi in Assam. Whatever the government is doing … is not healthy, it's just targeting Muslims to serve the political interests.'
Indian Express
4 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
How businesses around the world are responding to US tariff hikes
Businesses around the world are scrambling to assess the impact of steep new US tariffs, after President Donald Trump on late Thursday imposed higher duties on countries without updated trade agreements with Washington. According to Reuters, the US Customs and Border Protection agency began collecting the higher tariffs, ranging from 10 per cent to 50 per cent on Friday. The new measures push the average US import duty to its highest level in a century, up from just 2.5 per cent when President Trump took office in January. Trump has defended the move as necessary to 'rebalance' trade and boost US manufacturing, claiming on Truth Social that 'billions of dollars… will start flowing into the USA.' India has been hit with a 25% tariff, with Trump also threatening an additional, unspecified penalty over New Delhi's purchases of Russian oil. Aurobindo Nayak, who runs CI Ltd, a large tea exporter in Kolkata, told the BBC that premium Indian teas like Assam and Darjeeling will become more expensive in the US. 'We will definitely bear the brunt. But I think the people who are really going to be hit hard are the American consumers themselves,' Nayak said. 'To choose to tax tea in the United States is only going to have an inflationary effect. Assam tea has a lot of character, it is liked by the American consumers. Darjeeling tea is a specialty tea, it's not grown anywhere else. Consumption in the US is growing.' Additionally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he will not compromise the interests of Indian farmers. Thailand negotiated its expected 36% tariff down to 19%. Richard Han, CEO of Hana Microelectronics, said the lower rate means buyers are less likely to switch suppliers, calling it 'just… a tax, like VAT' for US consumers, reported BBC. Laos received one of the steepest hikes at 40%. Xaybandith Rasphone, vice-president of the Lao national chamber of commerce, said 60 companies employing nearly 60,000 people could be affected, warning of significant indirect job losses. Canada's tariffs rose from 25% to 35%, though many goods remain exempt under an existing North American trade treaty. But higher raw material costs could still bite. David Hope, vice president of Canadian aircraft component maintenance firm Hope Aero, told the BBC he expects a 'blanket 10%' vendor price hike soon, as steel and aluminium, both under 50 per cent tariffs, grow more expensive. 'Steel and aluminium are becoming more expensive in the US, so they're going to pass those costs right along,' he told the BBC. Mexico avoided immediate increases, securing a 90-day reprieve. Jaime Chamberlain, who imports millions of boxes of Mexican produce annually, said negotiators on both sides were keeping 'cool heads' but warned that without a deal, 'many farmers would just stop farming for the export market.' The European Union (EU) struck a deal capping most tariffs at 15 per cent, up from 4.8%. The Italian Institute of International Political Studies projects the country's GDP will dip 0.2 per cent, with agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and automotive sectors hit hardest. Cristiano Fini of the Italian Confederation of Farmers described the deal as 'a surrender,' than an agreement, reported BBC. Switzerland faced a surprise 39% rate, the highest in Europe. President Karin Keller-Sutter returned from last-minute talks in Washington without securing the previously discussed 10 per cent cap. Swissmechanic, representing the machine tool industry, called the US move a 'clear protectionist signal' as per BBC. 'The government must now act with clarity and confidence, and make determined use of the existing window of opportunity for negotiations with the US.' Brazil saw its tariff jump from 10 per cent to 50 per cent after Trump accused President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of unfairly targeting US tech firms. While orange juice and aircraft are exempt, Cecafé, Brazil's coffee exporters' council, warned of a 'significant' impact and potential price hikes for US consumers. Finding alternative buyers for the 8.1 million tonnes exported to the US annually will be difficult, the group said. Trump announced his 'Liberation Day' tariffs in April, but has modified rates several times since. His broader strategy also includes potential 100% duties on semiconductors. China, on a separate track, faces possible tariff hikes in August unless a truce is extended. Some countries, including India, China, and Brazil, are exploring a coordinated response via the BRICS bloc, Reuters reported. (With inputs from BBC, Reuters)
Free Malaysia Today
4 days ago
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
India to offer gun licences in volatile areas near Bangladesh
Muslims make up roughly 35% of the population in Assam. (EPA Images pic) NEW DELHI : India's Assam state, bordering Muslim-majority Bangladesh, is to issue gun licences to 'indigenous' residents, its Hindu nationalist leader has announced, a move raising concerns among the state's Muslims. Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has previously warned that the Assamese-speaking population 'face the threat of attacks from the Bangladesh side, and even in their own villages'. The northeastern state of around 31 million people is riven by multiple ethnic, linguistic and religious fault-lines, and was troubled by several bloody clashes in past decades. Muslims make up roughly 35% of the population, most of them Bengali speaking, according to the most recent national census in 2011, with the rest largely Hindus. Sarma announced yesterday the introduction of a website 'where indigenous people, who perceive a threat to their lives and reside in sensitive areas, can apply for arms licences'. India has otherwise strict gun control laws, and critics and opposition leaders condemned the move. 'This will lead to gang violence and crimes based on personal vendettas,' said opposition congress lawmaker Gaurav Gogoi on social media platform X. 'This is not governance, this is a dangerous step backwards towards lawlessness.' Sarma is from prime minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The move is part of a wider populist campaign by Sarma's BJP government backing the majority Assamese-speaking people, including large-scale eviction drives against what he has called 'illegal foreigners or doubtful citizens'. It is widely seen as targeting Muslims speaking Bengali – the main language in neighbouring Bangladesh. But many ethnic Bengalis are Indian citizens, with roots in Assam long before the region that is now Bangladesh was carved out at the bloody end of British imperial rule in 1947. Assam was the first state to implement a controversial citizenship verification exercise in 2019, which excluded nearly two million people – many of them Muslims. Tensions in Assam have grown in the past year since the overthrow of Bangladesh's autocratic government, once a close ally of Modi's BJP. Sarma has warned that 'the indigenous people' in border districts 'live in an atmosphere of insecurity due to the recent developments in Bangladesh'.
