Smart Cities – The conundrum of positioning a city either smart city or liveable city, contributes towards the larger question, could smart cities lead into smart urbanization.

“Urban Ethos and Pathos”, a book written by Raj Liberhan, former Director of India Habitat Centre, has delved into this crucial issue and urged the policymakers to look beyond bricks and mortar, and also a “heartless land development having no regard for the human need”.

“Are we going to be smart and do the right thing, or will be smart by not doing the right things,” a very crucial choice, which underpins urbanization — has been explored in the book that was launched earlier this month.

The book emphasizes democracy is not feudal rule of the elected; instead it is the formulation of law to serve the common man.

The author emphasizes there has to be a continuous interface with the providers of civic amenities and the residents to ensure the ease of good living, which generates a dynamism for the prosperity of the city.

In a land which saw the marvel of the Harappan civilisation at the beginning of major human imprints into the world of urban development. “The ease of good living should drive cities to create iconic spaces to reflect the aspirations of the geography, and its settlers for a harmonious coexistence”, the book says.

The reasons for uncontrolled expansion of cities usually – education and employment-trigger influx of people seeking a better future in urban centres, which has a cascading effect on house and then bad planning lead to urban growth, which neglects civic infrastructure, water, waste management, energy supply, health and culminates into environmental degradation.

Delhi-NCR and many other cities are already beset with these issues.

The author advocates foreign capital and expertise is badly needed to transform infra structure. He says the foreign expertise on road engineering layouts will show the way roads should not be planned.

The author also highlights the role of women in planning urbanization and deplores that cities have largely been designed for and by men having scant consideration for women’s needs. The planners often miss the cultural and social preference of women, “the city intimidates single women, single mothers”, and we are yet to recognize the housing needs of working women.

“The long road to better cities for women must start now”, says the author.

Land is a vital resource in the process of urbanization, and there is no alternative other than using this precious resource sensibly, argues the author insisting on better land management for cities.

The builder-led expansion in cities have blown out planning, design and aesthetics — resulting in urbanization — an outcome of builder-politician-bureaucracy nexus. The author says unregulated urban planning and absence of foresight has plagued Delhi’s cityscape. “Who anchors and who navigates the ambitions of the capital — the LG; the Chief Minister; or the municipal corporation,” asks the author.

The book is also a collection of writing of the author, published in newspapers, focussing on contemporary urban issues.

The author concludes unless the governments and the corporation unanimously believe that governance is beyond party and partisan considerations, there is no chance that the capital’s woes will be addressed.

Therefore, planning for each zone should begin at the entrance.

5G  – With fifth-generation cellular network technology (5G) round the corner that allows data transfer at a 10 times faster rate than 4G, India is set to witness major disruptions across industries in 2020 — with greater adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and advances computing at the edge, leading industry experts said on Tuesday.

Although the 5G technology that is gaining momentum fast globally may take at least another 5-6 years to reach the masses in India — for the simple reason that even 5G spectrum allocation is yet to take place for full-fledged trials — the enterprises are bullish on more real-life use cases emerging from the country.

“With 5G around the corner, greater adoption of IoT devices, and a need for faster decision-making, advanced edge computing that converges AI, IoT and 5G will be the key to realizing business value from data,” said Prakash Mallya, VP, and MD – Sales and Marketing Group, Intel India.

In the past 12 months, the integration of AI and IoT at the Edge has rapidly increased, allowing businesses across industries to design automated and more predictive systems.

Coupled with 5G services, edge computing requirements will accelerate exponentially.

“Harnessing these growing opportunities requires products and tools that are interoperable, computer vision enabled for the unique demands of the edge, software that is open and easy to deploy, and investment in the next generation of talent that can build, operate and effectively leverage new technology,” Mallya elaborated.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), commercial 5G deployments have begun in many regions and while 2019 is very much an introductory year at best, 2020 looks to be the year where 5G begins to ramp up.

“Although technologies will continue to evolve and find application in business processes, the mixture of 5G and IoT can be expected to dominate the foreseeable future. Staying competitive will ultimately mean adapting, and there will be plenty in 2020 and beyond for companies to catch up with. So, it’s time to get started,” said Sameer Mahapatra, Country Sales Head — India and SAARC, Aeris Communications.

However, the entire 5G ecosystem, which involves original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), infrastructure, spectrum and edge devices, is currently missing in India and in such a scenario, various 5G-enabled devices that are now set to see the light of day are redundant for the Indian consumers.

“We expect 5G to reach mainstream in India in 2023 and mass market starting 2025 or so,” said Neil Shah, Research Director at Counterpoint Research.

“This will, however, be much earlier compared to 3G and 4G era which took at least seven to eight years in India since the first global commercialisation for each generation of tech curves,” Shah told IANS.

According to cybersecurity firm Forcepoint, While 5G appears to be a promising service for organisations, the more reliable connectivity and lower latency of 5G will also work in favour of determined employees wishing to transfer swathes of corporate data.

5G will also bring new cyber threat scenarios in place.

“With the roll-out of 5G continuing in 2020, cybersecurity stack needs to have visibility and control of such data movement else organizations risk being unable to identify data theft at the speed necessary,” the company said in a statement.

Seqrite, the Enterprise Security solutions brand of Quick Heal Technologies Ltd, expects the threat exposure to increase substantially.

“Cybercriminals will look to capitalise on the new potential entry points that will open up within enterprise networks as everything from internet cars to smart refrigerators connect with them.

“The increase in threats to confidentiality and privacy will be unprecedented, with organisations and institutions required to monitor a much larger landscape for attacks,” said Seqrite.

Smartwatches do tell the time — like smartphones that still make and receive calls — but this particular wearable segment has come of age with real-life use cases in areas like health and fitness along with a connected app ecosystem that has made them a preferred choice for the Indian millennials.

According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) “Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker Q3 2019”, 3.07 lakh watches were shipped during the third quarter into India — registering 47 per cent growth quarter-on-quarter and 127 per cent growth year-on-year.

Among the watches, the country saw the arrival of 1.87 lakh smartwatches in the third quarter, registering 28 per cent QoQ growth and 93 per cent YoY growth.

With a strong millennial base with rising disposable income, India now offers immense growth potential for the smartwatch players, currently being dominated by the Apple Watch Series.

Here, one has to understand the difference between a true smartwatch and a basic one.

Apple, Fitbit and Fossil are true smartwatches while the rest of the crowd comes under the basic watch (with smart features) category.

To make it simpler, a basic watch is like an entry-level smartphone — brands like Huami’s Amazfit, Huawei etc. — while smartwatch — that can run third-party applications on the device itself — is considered truly ‘smart’.

“Basic watch includes devices resembling traditional wrist-worn watches and/or devices where timekeeping is a primary function. Timekeeping and a default watch screen, or watch face are a requirement for a device to be considered as a basic ‘watch’,” Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India, told IANS.

In a price-conscious market like India, several brands have entered the basic watch category with smart features, especially related to health and fitness.

“The mid-range segment or entry-level watch (basic watch) segment is growing very fast as more and more Indians realise the importance of staying fit. People who wore fitness bands for years are now switching to such watches, and, eventually, true smartwatches. We will see more brands entering this segment in 2020,” elaborated Singh.

Earlier, in the second quarter of 2019, the India market for wearable devices grew 30.9 per cent sequentially — reaching an all-time high of 30 lakh shipments in a single quarter, according to the IDC.

Smartwatches saw a healthy 99.6 per cent (YoY) and 42.9 per cent (QoQ) growth in the second quarter in the country.

At the rate of 30-40 lakh wearables each quarter, we can easily see India consuming in between 1.2 crore and 1.5 crore wearables in a year which is still small compared to globally but the growth is stupendous.

The wearable market is expected to reach global shipments of 222.9 million units in 2019, with earwear and watches accounting for more than 70 per cent of all wearable shipments by 2023.

According to Ramon T. Llamas, Research Director, wearables team, IDC, smartwatches “will move deeper into health and fitness and connect with multiple applications and systems, both at work and within the home.”

Google on Sunday released an adorable snowman doodle to celebrate winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. The word “solstice” originated from the Latin solstitium meaning “sun stands still”, when the ‘movement of sun’s path’ stops briefly.

Solstice occurs because the Earth is tilted on its axis of rotation by about 23.5 degrees and the tilt causes each hemisphere to receive different amounts of sunlight throughout the year. The winter solstice, also known as mid-winter, occurs when one of the Earth’s poles has its maximum tilt away from the Sun. Due to this, earth experiences the shortest day and the longest night of the year.

This year winter begins from December 22 and will last till March 20, 2020, according to the Google. It happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere it is the December solstice and in the Southern Hemisphere it is called June solstice. People across the globe took to various social media platforms such Twitter and Facebook to wish and celebrate winter solstice.

“In the Northern Hemisphere it is the December solstice and in the Southern Hemisphere it is called June solstice. Happy December Solstice to all life forms on Earth.The Northern Hemisphere’s longest night. The Southern Hemisphere’s longest day. And for the equator, caught between, a day like any other,” a user tweeted from his Twitter account.

Another user wrote: “Wishing my Twitter friends a happy and peaceful Winter Solstice this weekend! The nights will get lighter and only two or three months till flowers make an appearance in the gardens.Hurrah!.”

Google – In biggest donation yet from any global tech giant, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced the company will provide over $800 million to support small and medium businesses (SMBs), health organisations, governments and health workers on the frontline of global COVID-19 pandemic.

The commitment would include $250 million in ad grants to help the World Health Organisation (WHO) and more than 100 government agencies globally provide critical information on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other measures to help local communities.

“This is an increase from our initial $25 million announced last month. In addition, we’re providing $20 million in ad grants to community financial institutions and NGOs specifically to run public service announcements on relief funds and other resources for SMBs,” Pichai said in a statement on Friday.

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to worsen around the world, it’s taking a devastating toll on lives and communities.

Google committed a $200 million investment fund that will support NGOs and financial institutions around the world to help provide small businesses with access to capital.

“As one example, we’re working with the Opportunity Finance Network in the US to help fill gaps in financing for people and communities underserved by mainstream financial institutions,” said Pichai.

This is in addition to the $15 million in cash grants Google.org is already providing to nonprofits to help bridge these gaps for SMBs.

The company will give “$340 million in Google Ads credits available to all SMBs with active accounts over the past year”.

“Credit notifications will appear in their Google Ads accounts and can be used at any point until the end of 2020 across our advertising platforms,” Pichai announced, adding that it will help to alleviate some of the cost of staying in touch with their customers.

The overall commitment would also include a pool of $20 million in Google Cloud credits for academic institutions and researchers to “leverage our computing capabilities and infrastructure as they study potential therapies and vaccines, track critical data, and identify new ways to combat COVID-19”.

Google is working with supplier and partner Magid Glove & Safety, with the goal of ramping up production of 2-3 million face masks in the coming weeks that will be provided to the CDC Foundation.

“Additionally, employees from across Alphabet, including Google, Verily and X, are bringing engineering, supply chain and healthcare expertise to facilitate increased production of ventilators, working with equipment manufacturers, distributors and the government in this effort,” informed Pichai.

In addition to these commitments, Google also increased the gift match it offers every employee annually to $10,000 from $7,500.

“That means our employees can now give $20,000 to organizations in their communities, in addition to the $50 million Google.org has already donated,” said Pichai.

Apple has released a website and an iOS app that allows users to screen themselves for coronavirus symptoms, days after announcing that it would donate more than 10 million respirator masks across the US and Europe.

 Google Cloud – Google has announced machine images, a new type of Compute Engine resource that contains all the information people need to create, backup or restore a virtual machine, reducing the amount of time people spend managing their Cloud environment.

Custom images capture the contents of a single disk, for example, a boot disk, which can be used to create new instances that are preconfigured with the apps that you need.

Machine images are a more comprehensive resource that can contain multiple disks, as well as all of the information required to capture and create a new instance.

According to Google, it will reduce the time network admins and data scientists spend managing their cloud environments by eliminating extra steps and streamlining operations.

“In addition to storing complete instance properties and data, machine images use the same differential disk backup technology that powers incremental snapshots, giving you fast, reliable and cost-effective instance backups,” explained Ari Liberman, Product Manager, Google Compute Engine.

“The new machine images make it easy to create new instances at the heart of your scalability, backup and disaster recovery strategy,” he added in a statement.

Tax Payers –  The Finance Ministry on Wednesday notified setting up of a GST grievance redress committee at zonal/state level after it was approved in the last GST Council meeting this month.

The Council in its 38th meeting held on December 18 decided that a structured mechanism be set up for the taxpayers under GST to tackle grievances of taxpayers on GST-related issues of specific/general nature, Commissioner of AGST Policy wing of the Finance Ministry in a letter to all Chief Commissioners of Central Tax & GST and all Chief Commissioners/Commissioners of State Tax said on Wednesday.

The Council has approved constitution of ‘Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC)’ at Zonal/StateAlevel consisting of both Central Tax and State Tax officers, representatives of trade and industry and other GST stakeholders.

The Committee will examine and resolve all issues being faced by the taxpayers, including procedural difficulties and IT-related issues pertaining to GST.

It also can refer any issue requiring a change in Act/rules/notification/ form/circular/instruction to the GST Council Secretariat and the relevant Policy Wing of the CBIC (Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Custom). IT-related issues will be referred to GSTN.

Whenever a GST policy related issue is referred by a GRC, the Policy Wing of CBIC would examine the said policy issue, and if required, would make suitable recommendations to process it for placing it before the GST Council for its consideration.

In case, where there are more than one state corresponding to a single Central Tax Zone, the Grievance Redressal Committee will be constituted at state level for each State. Where there are more than one Central Tax Zones in a state, the committee would be constituted at the zonal level.

Each zonal/state level redressal Committee will comprise zonal principal chief commissioner/chief commissioner of Central tax (Co-chair) , chief commissioner/commissioner of state tax (co-chair), representatives of various trade associations (up to 12).

Representatives of prominent associations of tax professionals such as chartered accountants, tax advocates, tax practitioners (up to 4 in number), nodal officer of ITGRC of the Central Tax and Nodal officer of ITGRC of the state tax will also be part of it.