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Indian Current Affairs by : ramkyc
Preparing you for current affairs questions in competitive examinations
Updated: 12 hours 17 min ago
30.07.2010
Politics & the Nation
- On insulating CBI from politics
- This is a very good "Face Off" column that deserves a read. In a lighter vein, is it really necessary to insulate it? Shouldn't the incumbent governments have some crony dirty tricks department of their own? Worldwide that is the norm.
- Noel Tata set to take over as Tata International MD
- The role of the 53-year-old Noel Tata just got bigger in India’s biggest conglomerate on the 106th birth anniversary of JRD Tata, setting tongues wagging, yet again, on it being a step in the group’s succession plan for the top job.
- The reclusive Tata, who grew the retail business more than 10-fold in less than a decade, will be managing director at Tata International, a leather and engineering trading company with presence in 10 African nations, a region where it wants to double revenues to $1 billion in two years.
- Born in 1956 to Naval and Simone Tata, this half-brother of Ratan Tata has run retail company Trent for 12 years. He began his career at trading firm Tata International and rose to become a senior general manager. His father-in-law Pallonji Mistry is the largest shareholder of Tata Sons.
- The younger Tata was thrust into the job of heading Trent when retailing was at its infancy in India. With help from colleagues at group company Lakme, he opened his retail innings by taking over Bangalore-based Littlewoods, which eventually became Trent’s departmental store Westside. During his tenure, Trent’s turnover rose to 1,137 crore from 8 crore.
- Food inflation dips to 9.6% on cheaper cereals & veggies
- Food price inflation dropped to single digit 9.67% for the first time this year, even as the government continues to face a concerted Opposition attack on rising food and fuel prices.
- Headline inflation touched 10.55% in June and the government is worried that it will be even higher in July when the full impact of the fuel price hike is absorbed in the economy. The fuel price index rose 14.29% in the period, as against a 14.27% in the previous week.
- Most economists are also of the view that while food prices are cooling, core inflation is now a bigger problem.
- Whither Air India
- This is an ET editorial that argues against infusing more money into Air India as things stand today. Worth a look. An excerpt worth our noting:
- With the growth in passenger traffic at 28% in the first quarter, the Air India management has reportedly firmed up a scheme to acquire as many 127 new aircraft, hoping to break even by 2014-15. But with accumulated losses adding up to over Rs 14,000 crore, a debt burden of Rs 18,000 crore and dipping market share to boot, Air India’s gameplan for revival seems both fanciful and reckless.
- Will FDI in organized retail help all the stakeholders?
- This is a very good article that discusses the issue. Well worth a read. An excerpt from it that is worth our noting:
- To put things in perspective, about 40% of the country’s total GDP of $1 trillion comes from retail sales to Indian consumers. The local, one-off corner stores account for more than 94% of this total retail sales of around $400 billion. So-called organised retail that can be defined as a chain of anything more than 3-4 stores backed by an Indian entrepreneur or promoter, accounts for only 6% of total retail sales. This category includes names such as Reliance Retail, Spencer’s, Pantaloon, Aditya Birla Retail, Bharti, etc.
- Facebook faces embarrassment
- The personal details of 100 million users of social networking website Facebook are now available for download after they were leaked online.
- Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a code to scan Facebook profiles, collected data not hidden by users’ privacy settings, and compiled a list, which is now available as a downloadable file, containing the URL of every “searchable” Facebook user’s profile, their name and unique ID, the BBC reported on Thursday.
- European confidence at 2-yr high on exports push
- European confidence in the economic outlook rose to the highest in more than two years in July and German unemployment declined for a 13th month as exports sustained a recovery in the region. An index of executive and consumer sentiment in the 16 euro nations increased to 101.3 from 99 in June. That’s the highest since March 2008.
- Stemcells coaxed to rebuild bone,cartilage
- Scientists have shown for the first time that it may be possible to replace a human hip or knee with a joint grown naturally inside the body using the patient’s stem cells.
- In experiments on rabbits, the researchers coaxed the animals’ stem cells to rebuild the bone and cartilage of a missing leg joint.
- Some statistics: In the United States, more than 200,000 patients received total hip replacements in 2006, and nearly half a million got new knee joints.
- If these trends continue, an estimated 600,000 hip replacements and 1.4 million knee replacements will be carried out in 2015. The United States accounts for 50% total procedures worldwide, with Europe accounting for 30%.
- Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten The World Economy
- Authored by Raghuram Rajan, the Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister, this is one book that needs to be on our todo list, if not the bucket list.
- Take a look at this interview from Raghuram Rajan. Worth a read.
Read More.... 30.07.2010
29.07.2010
Politics & the Nation
Finance & Economy
Sport
Language Lessons
- Is UK on a wooing mission to India?
- If you read this article from David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, that is what we are sure to conclude. Take a look. An interesting read.
- Quraishi is the new CEC
- President Pratibha Patil appointed Election Commissioner (EC) Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi as the next Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) under Clause 2 of the Article 324 of the Constitution.
- Mr. Quraishi will assume office on July 30 as the incumbent, Navin Chawla, demits office on Thursday. He will head the three-member Election Commission till June 10, 2012.
- Mr. Quraishi is an IAS officer of the 1971 batch from the Haryana cadre. Born on June 11, 1947 in Delhi, Mr. Quraishi is a post-graduate in history from St. Stephen's College here. He did his Ph.D in communication and social marketing.
- Mr. Quraishi became EC on June 30, 2006. Prior to that, he was Union Secretary, Youth Affairs and Sports. He also served as Director-General, Doordarshan (National Television Network), and Power Secretary of the Haryana government.
- Those who want the economy to flourish cannot afford to tolerate fascist or authoritarian politics, of which fake encounters are one ugly manifestation. Comment.
- If you are asked such a question, today's op-ed by TK Arun offers the best possible answer. To summarize:
- The quintessentially antigrowth nature of fascist politics works at three levels.
- One, curtailment of individual liberty is inimical to innovation and creativity. Capitalist growth thrives on innovation and creativity, which could have quite disruptive consequences for established businesses. The capitalist economy thrives on the basis of decentralised decisions. An authoritarian state that controls everything hampers such decentralised decision-making and makes the whole system suboptimal.
- Two, entrenched big business can use its proximity to the state — and the politicians who man it — to get rid of those who make trouble for them, whether extortionists like the late, unlamented Sohrabuddin or upstart industrialists. Crony capitalism and the fascist state are made for each other.
- Three, the fascist ideology is a combination of authoritarianism with mobilisation of the majority through whipped up hatred of a minority. The social schism created by such antagonistic mobilisation is immanent with disruptive violence. The discrimination that the minority faces under a fascist state deprives the larger community of the creative talents of that minority (First-rate physicists Einstein, Max Born and Schrodinger fled Nazi Germany). More perniciously, it prepares the ground for disruptive violence in society. Often, the violence is directed at, and borne by, the minority. Sometimes, there is retaliatory violence, on a massive scale.
Finance & Economy
- RBI raises key policy rates; but banks raise only deposit rates
- In a move to tame price rise, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday hiked its short-term indicative lending rate by 25 basis points from 5.5 per cent to 5.75 per cent and borrowing rate by 50 basis points from 4 per cent to 4.50 per cent with immediate effect. Take a look at this graphic.
- The central bank has also raised the projection for real gross domestic product (GDP) growth for 2010-11 to 8.5 per cent, up from its April policy projection of 8 per cent with an upside bias.
- Some banks have announced a hike in deposit rates without hiking their lending rates. To the layman this may sound a bit strange. Look at the following explanation:
- The central bank cut the repo rate, the rate at which it lends to banks, by 425 basis points, to 4.75% from 9%, between October 2008 and February this year. During the period banks cut 1-3 year deposit rates by 400 basis points to a low of 6%. But the benchmark lending rates hardly moved by 100 basis points between 14.25% and 13.25%. This action by banks boosted their profitability, leaving the customer poorer. Net interest margins of banks got a boost. These high margins leave scope for slower gains in lending rates even if the central bank keeps raising rates.
- RBI governor to be vice chief of joint market regulators’ body
- The government introduced a bill in the Lok Sabha that provides for a joint mechanism headed by the Finance Minister to resolve differences among the financial regulators - SEBI, IRDA, RBI and PFRDA.
- It had also proposed a joint commission comprising the Finance Minister as Chairperson and RBI Governor as Vice Chairman, Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs, Secretary (Financial Services) and the heads of stock market, insurance, banking and pension fund regulators - SEBI, IRDA, RBI and PFRDA - as members.
- Dedicated debt corridor on anvil
- So reads a headline in today's ET. Is it a physical corridor?
- No. It is about enabling the establishment of dedicated debt funds to channelise foreign savings into the infrastructure sector. This is yet another attempt to address inadequate funding of this crucial sector that threatens to disrupt India’s economic progress.
- The finance ministry has reportedly written to regulators to facilitate the setting up of such funds by private entities, and allow them to tap into long-term foreign resources such as pension and insurance funds.
- Do you have a prescription for controlling inflation?
- By deploying monetary policy, we cannot hope to achieve medium- or long-term price stability. The decisive action to tackle inflation has to be in the form of acceleration of farm sector growth and ensuring comprehensive and timely distribution of agricultural produce. Also, focus must go back to economic reforms, which will ease supply-side constraints and bottlenecks.
Sport
- Maradona is no longer Argentina's coach
- The Argentine Football Association (AFA) decided not to renew Maradona’s contract, ending his erratic 21-month stint in charge of the national team that had mirrored his own long personal history of unpredictable behaviour and defiance.
- The AFA had offered him a four-year contract to continue through to the 2014 World Cup, but Maradona said he would only stay if his entire staff remained.
- That was an unacceptable condition to AFA president Julio Grondona, who wanted to replace several assistants including Maradona’s close friend, Alejandro Mancuso.
Language Lessons
- suss: Verb
- If you suss a person or situation, you realize or work out what their real character or nature is.
- balminess
- the quality of weather that is deliciously mild and soothing
- Sisyphean
- In Greek mythology, `Sisyphus` was a king punished in the Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again, and repeat this throughout eternity.
- eg: But whenever the US tries to train security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so that we can leave behind a somewhat stable country, it’s positively Sisyphean.
- prĂŞt-Ă -porter
- Ready-to-wear or prĂŞt-Ă -porter (often abbreviated RTW; off the rack or "off-the-peg" in casual use) is the term for factory-made clothing, sold in finished condition, in standardized sizes, as distinct from made to measure or bespoke clothing tailored to a particular person's frame.
Read More.... 29.07.2010
