Tatas on a pruning mission, crackerless Diwali for Delhiites and more news

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Amazon seems keen to bring drone-based delivery to India. The company has filed an application with the Indian Patent office for exclusive technology that will allow drones to identify and track other drones and aircraft. Amazon’s broader aim is to use drones for delivering packages within 30 minutes. Earlier, the company had filed another patent application here for a technology that would ensure quick response in case a drone’s path is obstructed by human or animal. India is in the process of floating a new drone policy, one that empowers its security agencies to shoot down "rogue" low-flying objects.

This year’s Diwali will be less luminous for people in and around Delhi. The Supreme Court has temporarily banned the sale of firecrackers in the national capital area till November 1. The apex court hopes the move will prevent severe air pollution from forcing schools to stop functioning like last year. US embassy data shows that New Delhi's air quality is at "very unhealthy" levels, accentuated by farmers burning unwanted vegetation and fumes from fireworks. The decision may improve air quality but will hurt livelihoods for thousands, especially at manufacturing hub Sivakasi, which makes 85% of firecrackers sold in India. Losses are pegged at around ?1,000 crore.

The Tatas want to have fewer group companies and some of its loss-making units will face the brunt. Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran wants to consolidate things “I will be the first to admit that we are very complex. We need to be simplified. I would like to see ourselves as 5,6,7 groups as opposed to 110 companies,” he told Economic Times. The idea is to streamline overlapping businesses and give more ammunition to the group’s largest companies — Tata Consultancy Services, Tata Steel and Tata Motors. Tata Teleservices could be the first casualty as Chandrasekaran believes the telecom operator requires investments of ?50,000 to ?60,000 crore to stay viable. The group may either sell the business or shut it down; 5,000-odd employees could get the boot.

SEBI’s proposed rules to prevent boardroom battles have hit the first roadblock. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has opposed 12 of the 24 proposals put forth by a panel headed by banker Uday Kotak. The MCA is sceptical of proposals that call for greater powers to independent directors and require compulsory inclusion of at least one woman as independent director. A recent survey found more than 250 companies will need to make major board-level changes to implement the committee's suggestions. Looks like a turf war is brewing between the MCA and SEBI over who should have the upper hand in regulating company affairs. Kotak’s idea is to encourage a “custodian or trusteeship” model where promoters don’t have unabated powers and companies work on “Gandhian principles”.

Come 2018, passenger screening at the Bengaluru airport will be a breezy affair. Passenger verification will take five seconds at every checkpoint, and the entire process will be completed in 10 minutes from the current average of 25 minutes, the Kempegowda International Airport promises. That’s because it will become India’s first to fully implement an Aadhaar-enabled biometric boarding system, with a target date of December 2018. Other airports plan to soon follow suit, and the civil aviation ministry has already begun linking the databases of airlines and airports with passengers’ identification documents.

Idea of the Day: If you want to get the world’s attention, you should focus on positive energy instead of strategy, says Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records. “How do you know that something is good? Well, you either know, or you don’t. It’s a feeling. It’s a kind of trust in something. There is no secret, no plan. The strategy is often that there is no strategy, only energy,” says Blackwell, who discovered Bob Marley.

“Get yourself in the right place at the right time. How do you do that? Work it out for yourself. Then you learn how to keep track, and keep moving. The more you travel, the more things start to happen. And then you end up where you end up. If you’re lucky, it’s where you were always meant to be.”

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— Nirajita Banerjee / Share this using #DailyRundown