Top headlines: Telcos get green signal, states start mock drills, and more

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Telecom firms get green signal for towers, services on railway land

The Ministry of Railways has opened its telecommunication services to private players, allowing them to install towers on land owned by it, Business Standard has learnt. So far, this right was reserved only for its own telecom arm — RailTel Corporation of India.

This comes months after the Union Cabinet eased land licensing fee (LLF) norms for railway land to attract private investment. In accordance with the new LLF policy, the existing rate of 7 per cent revenue sharing for mobile towers has been scrapped; instead, annual land use charges of 1.5 per cent of the market value of land would be enforced. Read more

DESH Bill may let companies have obligation of choice: Govt official

The Development of Enterprises and Services Hub (DESH) Bill, 2022, might ask companies to commit to only one of the criteria — investments, breakthrough technology, job creation, and exports — that would eventually augur well for the economy and spur growth, people aware of the matter said.

The Bill, which is currently a work in progress under the department of commerce, seeks to replace the existing special economic zone (SEZ) law. Read more

States start mock drills, get the beds and O2 ready to take on Covid

India began random testing of international arrivals at major airports over the weekend, while states took steps for mock drills to be carried out on Tuesday to assess the country’s preparedness in view of the fresh surge of Covid-19 cases in neighbouring China and other parts of the world.

The airport tests are aimed at a 2 per cent sample of all incoming international travellers.

Genestrings Diagnostic Centre’s lab resumed tests at Delhi airport, which it had stopped after entry restrictions were lifted at the international terminal for inbound passengers. Read more

Declining demand for jobs under MGNREGA, but workers await pending payments

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a social security and employment scheme aimed at providing “at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a fiscal year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work”.

It comes under the Ministry of Rural Development and was implemented in 2006.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while addressing the Lower House of Parliament on December 14 this year, claimed that the demand for work under MGNREGA is on the wane. Read more

Europe set the bar on Russian gas high enough to leave India unaffected

The movement of fuel prices in 2023 will dictate how much India will be affected by the combined impact of two petroleum price caps imposed by western nations.

On December 19, a fortnight after the US-led G7 group of nations had imposed a price cap on crude oil supplied by Russia, the energy ministers of the European Union (EU) agreed on a “market correction mechanism” to cap prices of natural gas in Europe. Both these measures taken together were designed to reduce Russia’s earnings from exports of petroleum, and stabilise prices of fuel, a key inflationary determinant, in the US and Europe. But the measures, which currently have little impact because of lower commodity prices amid a higher sanction bar, threaten to hurt energy import-dependent nations such as India if prices of crude and gas surge. Read more