Kotak says their interests have often been neglected in India’s traditionally male-dominated culture. That experience, he said, helped him create KMB’s team-based employee culture and sparked KMB’s philanthropic efforts at improving education in India, especially for young women. “It was capitalism at work and socialism in the home,” he said. He grew up in a cotton-trading family, in a multi-generational household with 16 family members under one roof.

Kotak says his social conscience was sparked in his youth. “We can bring millions of people into society, and make a small difference in the future of the world.”

It also operates in the U.S., U.K., the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Mauritius, primarily serving Indians abroad.īut Kotak believes the bank’s future lies at home: “Why should we look at other places when two-thirds of India is still unbanked?” He says KMB has the opportunity to reach more customers than the country’s entire banking sector has done to date. Today the company has diversified into insurance and investments, and boasts 600 branches and revenue of US$2.8 billion. (The story corrects spelling of finance minister's name in para 6.This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

There will be little movement on the jet contract and another on submarines if no new funds are announced, the defense ministry official said. Do not look straight in the eyes, especially Elders. Global defense companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing are bidding for a contract to supply the air force 114 combat planes which will be made in India in a deal estimated to be over $15 billion. beliefs and religious preferences of their Native American patients in order to provide optimal. The Modi government has also tied military modernization to its Make-in-India drive to build a domestic industry which has been slow in taking off. 'Pensions take away a major chunk of India's defense expenditure every year,' he said. Share of capital procurement had come down to 18% from 21% during the same period. Laxman Behera, a research fellow at the government-funded Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, said the military's spending on pay, allowances and pensions had risen from 45% to 56% in the last four years. 'We need a lot of funds but it is not very likely to come,' a defense ministry official said. There are 2.4 million defense pensioners at the moment, with approximately 55,000 being added every year. Indian military planners have also considered restructuring the forces for the last couple of years to reduce manpower costs, but have not moved fast enough. Part of that has been reduction in troops by about 300,000 and the money saved in this is invested in much more advanced equipment and research and development. Since Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in late 2012, he has made strengthening and modernizing the military a very key part of his policy platform.

While China doesn’t give much break-up, it is largely assumed that a substantial portion of it goes toward modernization, helped also by a cutback in maintenance costs. But this year, a significant rise to what has already been allotted looks difficult,' the official involved in the budget preparations said.Ĭhina, by contrast, in March announced defense spending of around $180 billion, a 7.5% increase over 2018 and faster than the economic growth target. 'Defense is our major spending and we give it as much as the budget allows. In an interim budget announced in February before national elections, the government allocated 4.31 trillion rupees ($62.27 billion) for defense, a 6.6 percent rise over the previous year, raising concern at the time it wouldn't be enough for modernization.īut a finance ministry official told Reuters there was unlikely to be any change to that allocation when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the federal budget in parliament. The army, a large part of which is deployed on the border with traditional foe Pakistan, has been seeking everything from assault rifles to surveillance drones and body armor.īut these plans have been on hold for years because governments have not been able to set aside large sums and most of the defense expenditure goes on salaries and pensions for a 1.4 million standing military, the world's second largest after China. India's air force desperately needs hundreds of combat planes and helicopters to replace its Soviet-era aircraft while the navy has long planned for a dozen submarines to counter the expanding presence of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean. of 7 of Similar to Modest Shy Indian girl with downcast eyes, Tilak dupatta in a retro style. MUMBAI (Reuters) - India is likely to stick to a modest rise in defense spending in the 2019/2020 budget due on Friday because of tight government finances, officials said, further delaying a long-planned military modernization program.

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