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Officials from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) visited Jharkhand this month to assess the extent of child labour in its mica mines.The work puts children at risk of skin disease, respiratory infections, injury and death.Jain said it would not be fair to target the children's families, longer saw chain who are usually poor and illiterate.7 million child workers in India aged five to 17, out of 168 million globally.The current law bans children under 14 from working in only 18 hazardous occupations and 65 processes including mining, gem cutting and cement manufacture. "We realise it is poverty that is driving these villagers to send their children to the mines, not to schools," he said.

Thousands of children climb down narrow mine shafts with no safety equipment, and cut mica with hammers and chisels for up to eight hours a day, activists say.The work puts children at risk of skin disease, respiratory infections, injury and death. But children who help in family businesses will be permitted to work outside school hours, a loophole that activists say may be exploited by unscrupulous employers."Many of these mines are illegal and they hire child workers to keep costs down.Thousands of children risk their lives working for a pittance in crumbling mica mines, extracting the sparkly mineral used in lipsticks and eye-shadow as well as electronics. We told them we would take strict action against anyone caught doing so," he said.". Few have systems to check the use of child labour, activists say. Up to 20,000 children may be working in the mica mines in Jharkhand and Bihar, according to some estimates. The state, along with Bihar, produces about three-quarters of the mica mined in India.

The mica from illegal mines is sold to traders or intermediaries, who sell it to exporters, who in turn sell it to manufacturers of cosmetics, chemicals and electronics. But legal or not, no one should be engaging child workers - it is against the law," said Yashwant Jain, a member of NCPCR, who visited Jharkhand."So we are putting the onus on the traders, who are benefiting from the situation.The International Labour Organization estimates there are 5.Indian Nobel Laureate and child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi has said big corporations must do more to clean up their supply chains and ensure that no child labour is involved in the products they manufacture. Only by raising awareness that what they are doing is wrong can we solve the problem."We met with some traders and told them not to buy mica from child workers.Government officials appealed to local traders on Tuesday to stop buying mica mined by child workers, as the government comes under pressure from activists to clamp down on child labour.India wants to amend the three-decade-old law to outlaw child labour in all sectors.

"Right now the need of the hour is a proper roadmap and a clear policy by the government of India to actually turn this ambition into reality," Ishihara said.Ather’s scooters are connected to the internet, come with a touchscreen and have a top speed of 80 kph. It is a value for money equation," said Sohinder Gill, global chief executive officer at Hero Electric, the country’s top-selling e-scooter manufacturer.A handful of carmakers including Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, Toyota Motor Corp and Nissan Motor Co are testing the ground to launch electric vehicles in the country, some as early as 2020.Hurt by high fuel prices, Vinod Gore, a farmer in Gove village in Maharashtra, ditched his petrol scooter for an electric model, underlining how two-wheelers are driving the country’s goal of electrification of its vehicles.15) he would otherwise have spent on fuel for the same distance. Compared with cars, scooters are lighter, which means they can use less powerful batteries that are cheaper.The potential is huge.Yamaha, which is developing a global electric two-wheeler platform, plans to bring an electric scooter or motorcycle to India in the next 3 to 5 years, Yasuo Ishihara, managing director of the manufacturer’s India unit, told Reuters. India is the world’s biggest market for scooters and motorcycles with annual domestic sales exceeding 19 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018 - six times that of car sales over the same period. Sales of these vehicles, ubiquitous on Indian city roads, are expected to double to 935,000 units a year by 2023, according to consulting firm P&S Market Research.Ather, whose business model includes setting up charging stations in every city it launches, is working on new products ahead of plans to expand to 30 cities in the next three years.Importantly, electricity supply in smaller towns and cities, where demand is picking up, is irregular although frequent power shortages in India are a thing of the past.Gore’s electric scooter, built by Indian start-up Okinawa, runs for about 100-120 km (60-75 miles) on a single charge which costs the sugarcane farmer less than 10 per cent of the 150 rupees (USD 2."India’s electric revolution will be led by two-wheelers.In May 2017, India’s economic policy think tank began discussions to form a new policy that suggested electrification of all new vehicles by 2030 by mainly offering subsidies to buyers. In fiscal 2017-18, sales more than doubled to 54,800 from a year ago while electric car sales fell to 1,200 from 2,000 over the same period, according to data from the Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV).Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has set a target of electric vehicles making up 30 per cent of new sales of cars and two-wheelers by 2030 from less than 1 per cent today.Electric scooters make up a fraction of the total but are growing fast.But its efforts to convince carmakers to produce electric vehicles have flopped mainly because of no clear policy to incentivise local manufacturing and sales, lack of public charging infrastructure and a high cost of batteries. The supply chain is not robust which means manufacturers need to rely on imported components."There is a line of sight now," said Ravneet Phokela, a chief business officer at Ather which is backed by venture capital firm Tiger Global, adding that there is greater acceptance by buyers and the government is also coming on board.His only gripe is that the scooter struggles when going uphill. It would also open up a new market for global companies like Japan’s Yamaha Motor and Suzuki Motor that are drawing up initial plans to launch electric scooters and motorcycles in the country. They cost about 131,000 rupees - nearly twice the amount Gore paid."You can’t increase speed on mountains the way you can accelerate with traditional petrol-powered scooters or motorcycles.But he says there is also a market for more premium models like those made by Bengaluru-based start-up Ather Energy which is designed to appeal to tech-savvy city commuters.Cost-conscious two-wheeler buyers like Gore might be a better bet. While Okinawa is already building a new plant in northern India to more than treble its capacity to a million electric scooters a year, Ather is scouting for a site to set up its second plant.The government also wants to push the use of electric vehicles for public use, a revolution already led by three-wheeled autorickshaws."A policy or incentive to help manufacturers of cars or two-wheelers will go a long way in making electric mobility more affordable than subsidising individual buyers," said Kaushik Madhavan, vice president, mobility at consultant Frost & Sullivan.Two-wheeler companies are further down the road with Hero Electric and several start-ups including Okinawa, Ather Energy and Twenty Two Motors already selling electric scooters."There has never been a better time to be in this business than now," he said.Okinawa and Ather are both expanding their production facilities.Gore is pleased with his Okinawa scooter, which he purchased four months ago because it is easy and cheap to maintain and he can charge it at home. There is turbo mode that delivers more power but that is still less than petrol scooters," he said.Japan’s Suzuki Motor is working on plans to launch an electric scooter in India by 2020, while Indian motorcycle makers Bajaj Motor and TVS Motor are also eyeing electric models. The scooters can also be charged quickly and more easily, often using existing plug points in homes, and their price is similar to petrol-powered models.(Source).Hero, which sold 31,000 electric scooters in 2017-18, expects to double sales every year for the next few years and break even on costs within one year, said Gill.The next biggest market is China, with annual motorcycle sales of about 17 million in 2017.Frost’s Madhavan said most electric scooters currently on sale are basic in terms of design, range and performance so that the price can be kept affordable, especially in smaller towns where distances are shorter and buyers more frugal."I bought it to save money," said China saw chains manufacturers Gore, who paid 75,000 rupees (USD 1,077) for the scooter and expects to recover the cost in two to three years in terms of savings on petrol and maintenance.By 2030, sales of electric scooters are expected to cross 2 million a year, even as most carmakers resist bringing electric cars to India. The challenge is that most electric scooters sold today are utilitarian and not as powerful as models that run on petrol that can go faster and climb gradients easily.India is now working on a new policy which aims to incentivise investments in electric vehicle manufacturing, batteries and smart charging, instead of only giving benefits on sales.The roadblocks for scooters are fewer. The scooter is fitted with a battery that can generate maximum power of 2,500 watts, giving a top speed of 75 km per hour (47 mph), which he says is sufficient for his needs.The proposal faced resistance from carmakers and auto parts companies that considered the shift too sudden and ambitious, and the target was dialled back to 30 per cent.While Ishihara did not say how much Yamaha plans to invest in its electrification push, he said any investment shall mainly be for power units and batteries and to develop infrastructure with partners.

."Under the extended producers’ responsibility, these manufacturers will have to ensure that discarded plastic is effectively picked up by rag-pickers, including paying them  extra.The state government has decided to extend to manufacturers, the responsibility of disposing plastic waste generated from daily use products such as branded snacks, and shampoo and soap packets.  " Rag-pickers are usually paid Rs 6 per kg to sell multi-layered packs. An official from the state government said that consumer goods’ manufacturers will be given three months’ time to put in place a mechanism to collect and deposit used plastic packets at collection centres.Mumbai: Barely days since the implementation of the plastic ban by the government, and the 3/8" saw chain Suppliers move to curb plastic waste from fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) is already on the table.  According to officials, after the ban on plastic bags, the state government is focusing on plastic waste generated from FMCGs and e-commerce products.A senior official from the environment department said, "The plastic from multi-layered packaging is usually collected by rag-pickers and later deposited at collection centres. If firms fail to collect plastic, we will ban plastic for multi-layered packaging items, too," he said. We have asked companies to pay rag-pickers a minimum of Rs 12 to Rs 13 per kg. However, the amount of plastic generated is huge.

In our first-hand experience of the Zenfone AR, we found it to be a well-built smartphone with flagship specifications — apart from the camera module, it was similar to a flagship smartphone. Till then, the Zenfone AR will hold its worth before ARCore reaches the masses. And just a few days ago, Google proudly unveiled their ARCore — an answer to Apple’s AR Kit and a tool to make the standard smartphone AR compatible.The Zenfone AR had massive potential to become either a play toy or a developer’s product, like Google’s Nexus line-up.It is really difficult to understand why Google let ASUS develop such an expensive product that would be rendered useless after a few days of its launch. The ASUS Zenfone AR looks like a waste of time and resources for the company unless Google updates Tango phones to ARCore. At its India launch event, ASUS stressed on the Zenfone AR to be a flagship smartphone that aimed to provide the best experience with whatever’s possible in the world of smartphones.Lenovo’s Tango phone never caught up with the masses, partly due to mediocre specifications and partly due to an impractical form factor, ASUS wanted to tackle these two problems with the Zenfone AR. We don’t know the support timeline for the Tango platform but we expect it to stick around for some time.Not only the manufacturers, even AR app developers are in a fix, especially the ones that offer paid apps in this genre. However, with Google’s new ARCore, there’s no need for developers to get a smartphone with additional sensors. Google’s Tango required the smartphone to feature multiple sensors at the back, which eventually made making a practically slim smartphone difficult.A few weeks ago, ASUS enthusiastically launched its flagship ASUS Zenfone AR, claimed to be the world’s first smartphone to feature both Daydream (Google’s VR platform) and Tango (Google’s AR platform). Lenovo’s Phab 2 Pro catered to budget segment whereas ASUS’ flagship Zenfone AR wanted to offer the best experience. If they 1/4" pitch saw chains manage to make it compatible with ARCore, they might be able to reap benefits of their hard work. They could have halted the development of the Zenfone AR to save time ASUS’ time and efforts, considering they have named ASUS among other major manufacturers to implement ARCore in their offerings. Also, ARCore will let most existing smartphone users (particularly the flagship ones) in the world enjoy AR content, without investing in additional hardware upgrades.If you have already owned or are planning to get the Zenfone AR, then there’s no need to worry as it is a remarkable flagship smartphone in everyday usage scenarios.(The article has been published on Deccan Chronicle by the same author). So, what about Project Tango? Is it necessary anymore?In 2014, Google unveiled Project Tango to the world, promising the availability of Augmented Reality on smartphones. Nonetheless, Google found two major smartphone manufacturers of the world interested in building Tango smartphones — Lenovo and ASUS.