Civil Services Mentor August 2012 WWW - Upscportal

Index
Chief Editor:
Sachchida Nand Jha
Editor:
Yagya Nand Jha
Designed by:
Upendra Bhardwaj
Editorial Office:
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CURRENT AFFAIRS
National Issues 13
International Issues 19
India & the World 28
Economy 32
Science and Technology 41
Sports 63
Award & Prizes 71
In the News 73
PAGE NO. 4
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PAGE NO. 84
Selected Articles from Various
News Paper 91
AUGUST, 2012
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Right Diagnosis, Wrong
Medication
AUGUST, 2012
Think good and it will be good
Positive thinking can be one of the most powerful weapons one can have. We are living in a brutally
competitive world where a minor slip can result into voyage to abyss. Not everyone accepts or believes in
positive thinking. Some consider the subject as just nonsense, and others scoff at people who believe and
accept it. Among the people who accept it, not many know how to use it effectively to get results. Yet, it seems
that many are becoming attracted to this subject, as evidenced by the many books, lectures and courses about
it. This is a subject that is gaining popularity. Negative thoughts, words and attitude bring up negative and
unhappy moods and actions. When the mind is negative, poisons are released into the blood, which cause
more unhappiness and negativity. This is the way to failure, frustration and disappointment. People often fall
victim to outbursts, anger, fear and dislikes. All these elements are mere manifestations of our negative thoughts.
But the thing with negativity is that, the more you express it, the more you attract it. Thats where power of
positive thinking comes into the picture.
It is important to identify negative thoughts as soon as they appear on the surface and bury them before
they start taking root. The challenge is to apply mind and logics instead of emotions. Cultivate the hobby of
positive thinking. Hang around with people who have a positive disposition towards life. Positivity is infectious
and when you are surrounded by delightful people, you start feeling and behaving the same. If you can simply
think in a positive way, you can most certainly affect the outcome of your actions. Whatever we do begins with
a thought. We are always thinking something or the other. So why not we should strive to incorporate this
inevitable thought process in our lives in a positive way? Positive thinking is a virtue and a necessity in
todays world. The single attribute of positive thinking can help in making a difference to our lives and also to
the people in our surroundings. Positive thought instigate positive attitude towards a task, which in turn
changes the outcome. It is the crucial foundation upon which a healthier, happier and longer life is build upon.
A story to illustrate how it works:
Wagish was appearing for the UPSC interview, but as his self-esteem was low, and he considered himself
as a failure and unworthy of success, he was sure that he was not going to get the job. He had a negative
attitude towards himself, and believed that the other applicants were better and more qualified than him.
Wagish manifested this attitude, due to his negative past experiences with interviews. His mind was filled
with negative thoughts and fears concerning the job for the whole week before the interview. He was sure he
would be rejected. On the day of the interview he got up late, and to his horror he discovered that the shirt he
had planned to wear was dirty, and the other one needed ironing. As it was already too late, he went out
wearing a shirt full of wrinkles. During the interview he was tense, displayed a negative attitude, worried
about his shirt, and felt hungry because he did not have enough time to eat breakfast. All this distracted his
mind and made it difficult for him to focus on the interview. His overall behavior made a bad impression, and
consequently he materialized his fear and did not get the selected.
Malay was also appearing for the UPSC interview, but approached the matter in a different way. He was
sure that he was going to get the job. During the week preceding the interview he often visualized himself
making a good impression and getting the job. In the evening before the interview he prepared the clothes he
was going to wear, and went to sleep a little earlier. On day of the interview he woke up earlier than usual, and
Editors Note
had ample time to eat breakfast, and then to arrive to the interview before the scheduled time. He got selected
because he made a good impression. He had also of course, the proper qualifications, but so had Allan.
What do we learn from these two stories? Is there any magic used? No, it is all natural. When the attitude
is positive, we enjoy pleasant feelings and visualize what we really want to happen. This brings brightness to
the eyes, more energy and happiness. The whole being broadcasts good will, happiness and success. Even the
health is affected in a beneficial way. We walk tall, our voice is more powerful, and our body language shows
the way we feel. Think positive and expect only favorable results and situations, even if your current
circumstances are not as you wish them to be. In time, your mental attitude will affect your life and circumstances
and change them accordingly.
RELEVANCE OF POSITIVE THINKING
Positive thinking brings inner peace, success, improved relationships, better health, happiness and
satisfaction. It also helps the daily affairs of life move more smoothly, and makes life look bright and promising.
Positive thinking is contagious. People around you pick your mental moods and are affected accordingly.
Think about happiness, good health and success and you will cause people to like you and desire to help
you, because they enjoy the vibrations that a positive mind emits. In order to make positive thinking yield
results, you need to develop a positive attitude toward life, expect a successful outcome of whatever you do, but
also take any necessary actions to ensure your success.
A Key to Success
Use only positive words always while thinking and while talking. Use words such as, I can, I am able,
it is possible, it can be done, etc.
Try to ignore and disregard negative thoughts. Refuse to think such thoughts, and substitute them with
constructive happy thoughts.
Before starting with any plan or action, visualize clearly in your mind its successful outcome. If you
visualize with concentration and faith, you will be amazed at the results.
Associate yourself with people who think positively.
Always sit and walk with your back straight. This will strengthen your confidence and inner strength.
Avoid sentences like I wish I could have or I wish I should have.
Focus on what you have rather than pondering over what you lack.
Dont think about past regrets or future worries. Past is gone and future comes when it comes. Present is
what we have so we must make the most out of it.
Be natural and be happy with what you are and what you have.
Yagya Nand Jha
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The Indian Presidential
election is a game about which
political formation manages their
reputation best and serves no other
purpose. While the new President
will take charge in little over five
weeks, the intricacies of
communication, reputation of
probable candidates and the image
management techniques used by
party bosses is playing out this
week. This is a lay mans attempt
to decode the current scenario and
a reputation management
professionals understanding of
who managed their image and
how? Mamata Bannerjees unholy
and conspiratorial grouping with
Mulayam Singh Yadav and Sonia
Gandhis strategy in isolating her
and winning the support of most
parties in opposition, have exposed
not only the apparent fissures in
the UPA coalition government but
also the NDAs inability to find a
suitable candidate. NDA is now
supporting Sangma who can best
be described as a borrowed
candidate. Regional parties have
gone arrogant and have gone on to
display power in their own bizarre
way, and that doesnt augur well
for the democracy; and the two
national parties are in a huddle
knowing very well the power centre
doesnt lie with them anymore.
The high octave drama was
good enough to break any kind of
boredom. There is no disputing the
fact that Indias ex finance Minister
Pranab Mukherjee is an excellent
choice. He has all the right
credentials, and the credibility to
occupy the post; even though it
would mean that the Congress
party would lose its seasoned
trouble shooter. His likely elevation
has to be welcomed. What should
be condemned is the deceitful
conduct of various parties in the
entire episode and many more to
follow till the elected
representatives cast their ballot to
either elect Pranab Mukerjee or
former speaker PA Sangma who is
supported by a truncated
opposition alliance without the
support of its key partners Shiv
Sena and JD(U).
The alliance in opposition is
supporting a candidate who never
belonged to its fold, having
offended two of its alliance partners
namely Shiv Sena superemo Bal
Thackery and JD(U) leader and
NDA convenor Sharad Yadav, who
have gone all out to support UPA
nominee Pranab Mukerjee. And
first one to announce the
candidate, has gone on a silent
mode on PA Sangma! Mamata
Banerjee may have many faults. She
is volatile and unpredictable. At
times she is also unreasonable, but
then which politician is not? The
run-up to the presidential election
has thrown interesting insights to
how a politician conducts himself;
treats his party; how the parties
shift their stand-rather do they have
any stand and logic.
Not after the West Bengal
Chief Minister had ousted the
Congresss own preference for
Rashtrapati Bhawan Finance
Minister Pranab Mukherjee as first
choice followed by Vice-President
Hamid Ansari. And certainly not
after Ms Banerjee and Mr. Singh
had dared to include Manmohan
Singh in their list of three, the other
two being Abdul Kalam and
Somnath Chatterjee. Ms Banerjee
and Mr. Singh were in fact
suggesting that the Congress
change its Prime Minister, a
proposal the party should have
rejected instantly, without a second
thought. Indeed, it should have
been evident to the Congress that
Ms Banerjee and Mr. Singh had
dragged Dr. Singh into the
presidential contest with the sole
intention of unsettling and
embarrassing the leadership troika
of Ms Gandhi, Dr. Singh and Mr.
Mukherjee. As it turned out, the
ploy worked and a paralysed
Congress showed itself incapable
of mustering the strength and
clarity required to deal with the
situation.
Meanwhile, former speaker of
the House of Common and an ally
of the ruling alliance, PA Sangma
floated his candidature breaking
himself away from the alliance,
kicking his principle party and has
gone on to seek conscience
votes from the various parties. As
per Sangma, his victory in the
presidential race would be a big
message to more than 100-
million tribals in the country and
suggested that it could help
readdress tribal-related issues.
Sangma has been a seasoned
politician and has been into active
politics for close to four decades
now; and believes that the issue of
the tribal can be raised from a
passive post! Sangmas
approach is straight from Charles
de Gaulles book of thought; In
order to become the master, the
politician poses as the servant.
If Mulayam and Mamata (M
Square) were strategic enough the
best thing to do would have been
to reach out to Jayalalitha and
Naveen Patnaik before committing
this silly act. The reason for not
doing that could have been Purno
Sangma having been already
fielded by them. But they could
have really embarrassed Sonia by
proposing Purno Sangma as a
fourth name. The interesting
development that some media
outlets reported on the night of
June 13
th
was that Pranab stating
late at night that he is not interested
in running for President, which
turned out to be false and mere
rumours.
In all this drama the BJP in
particular and the NDA at large is
completely isolated. What is
interesting to note is the second
largest party in the NDA the JDU
has shown favourability towards
Pranab Mukherjee. One possible
real shocker for the media, for
NDA and for the M Square could
be the JDU joining the government
with NK Singh being made Finance
Minister when Pranab gets
elevated. Thereby UPAs reliance
on both Mamata and Mulayam can
be reduced drastically. Congress
does not have any base in Bihar like
the way they do in a small way in
UP, so partnering with JDU will not
hurt its absence of ambition in
Bihar in the short term.
Political parties, as is their
wont, play political games, whether
in a parliamentary or presidential
election. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who
distinguished himself as one of
Indias most popular Presidents
during 2002-2007, seems to have
been quick to sense the designs of
self-serving politicians who were
seeking to drag him into another
presidential contest. Often
celebrated as the Peoples President
during his years in office, Mr.
Kalam enjoys the love and affection
of countless youth in the country.
The octogenarian bachelor is seen
as a selfless patriot standing apart
from the much-derided political
class. In 2002, when he decided to
contest, the political circumstances
were markedly different: both the
major political formations, the
NDA and the Congress, were with
him, and only the Left parties put
up a token fight. Now, with Mr.
Mukherjee getting the support of
even the Samajwadi Party whose
leader, Mulayam Singh, was
instrumental in first proposing Mr.
Kalams name in 2002 and floating
his candidature this time around
too the presidential race is as
good as over. The Left parties will
decide on their stand on June 21,
but no matter what, they would be
averse to backing an NDA nominee
even if it is Mr. Kalam.
Mr. Kalam would surely have
realised he would be placing his
own legacy under threat if he were
to contest again. As a former
President, he is taken seriously
wherever he goes. On the
Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant
issue, his views had a bearing on
the broader public opinion, even if
not on the local populace. If West
Bengal Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee and the BJP wanted him
as President, it was only to serve
their respective political ends. The
BJP will do anything to embarrass
the Congress, and Ms Banerjee will
stop at nothing to stay in the
spotlight and project herself as the
prime mover of all things. To his
credit, Mr. Kalam was able to see
through the motives of his
supposed backers, and resist the
temptation to enter the fray. In 2007,
when there was a similar move to
make him contest again, he had
rightly stepped back as he did not
want to involve Rashtrapati
Bhavan in any political process.
Five years on, Mr. Kalams
statesmanship, vision and sense of
his own legacy remain
undiminished.
Waging a political battle using
the presidential elections is
another low to hit the politics in
India.Its that time again. The time
when the next President of India
will be elected and the lobbying,
jostling and campaigning have
begun. As of course, has the
speculation about who will get the
job. The shady drama that preceded
the announcement of Presidential
candidates for India by various
parties has left a bad taste in the
mouth of even the toughened
mocking watchers of Indian
politics.
Aman Srivastava
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also instructed the President to take
necessary measures under the
Constitution to ensure
continuation of the democratic
process through the parliamentary
system of government.
The Supreme Court of
Pakistan had instructed the Prime
Minster Yusuf Raja Gilani to ask
Swiss authorities to reopen cases
of multi-million dollar graft cases
against the President Asif Ali
Zardari, which the Prime Minister
refused to follow, citing
constitutional immunity enjoyed
by the president as the reason. Asif
Ali Zardari was accused of
laundering an estimated 12 million
dollar, received as the kickback by
the companies looking for customs
inspection contracts, to his Swiss
Bank account, when his wife
Benazir Ali Bhutto was the Prime
Minister of the country during
1990s. After this countrys then-
military dictator deposed the
Supreme Court chief justice in 2007,
a boisterous movement of
protesting lawyers took to the
streets and ushered in the return of
democracy. Now that same court
may be poised to bring about a
premature end to Pakistans
elected government. Since its
December judgment striking down
an amnesty that shielded President
Asif Ali Zardari and other officials
from old criminal allegations, the
top court has pressed the
government on corruption, in
particular a dated money-
laundering case against Zardari.
The standoff has cemented the
Supreme Courts position as a
central player in Pakistans nascent
democracy. But it has also
highlighted questions about the
solidity of that system.
From the time Pervez
Musharraf suspended him and
placed him under house arrest in
March 2007, through his first
Pakistan on 19 June 2012, debarred
Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf
Raja Gilani from his office. The
courts ruling also disqualified
Gilani as the member of the
National Assembly, the lower
house of the Majlis-e-Shoora
(Parliament). Gilani was convicted
for violating the article 63(1) (g)
(contempt of court) of the
constitution of Pakistan on 26 April
2012 by the Supreme Court. The
courts verdict came following
Gilanis refusal to probe cases of
corruption against Pakistan
President Asif Ali Zardari. The
three-judge Bench of the apex
Pakistani court headed by Chief
Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry held Gilani, Pakistans
longest serving Prime Minister,
ineligible for the post since 26 April
2012 when the court awarded him
a symbolic 30-second sentence for
the contempt of court. The court
restoration later that year and the
second in 2009, to present times,
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary
has come to be seen by ordinary
Pakistanis as the only hope for their
country. Under his leadership, the
Supreme Court has been nothing
less than activist, calling
politicians, government, the
military, intelligence services,
police, all of them to account. From
Pakistans relations with the U.S.
to the countrys budget, there is no
area of public life that the higher
judiciary has spared in the last five
years, no national ill that it has not
commented on. Some have seen in
its actions and pronouncements a
grudge against the Pakistan
Peoples Party government,
especially against President Asif
Ali Zardari. Now and then, the
courts actions have given reason
for such a conclusion, especially
when it overturned the graft cases
amnesty granted by General
Musharraf that benefited Mr.
Zardari. Still, the Chief Justice has
defied easy labelling, such as pro-
military, pro-Establishment or
pro-Opposition. What is more
easily apparent, though, is that he
enjoys public adulation and
affection of the kind previously
unheard of in the country.
Not surprising then that
when the countrys biggest
property tycoon claimed he had
bribed Mr. Chaudharys son to win
favourable judgments in cases
relating to him being heard in the
Supreme Court, the allegation came
to be seen as part of a political
campaign to unseat the Chief
Justice. If that is really the case, Mr.
Chaudhary has won this battle: he
first took suo motu notice of the
allegations against his son, then
recused himself from the case; the
bench hearing the case has now
ordered the government to use all
available instruments to
investigate the allegations and act
as appropriate. Most importantly,
in the time-frame covered by the
allegations, the Court gave no
verdicts favourable to the
businessman. The controversy is
bound to have implications for the
turf war that has roiled Pakistan
over the last few months. The
Supreme Court and the Executive
have been locked in a struggle to
redefine the limits of their powers.
Before the court are petitions
against the Speakers decision not
to disqualify the Prime Minister on
the grounds of his conviction in the
now famous contempt case. The
conflict has already sapped the
energy of the nation, and diverted
virtually all attention from day to
day governance, but if it leads to
stronger institutions, Pakistan, and
its nascent democracy can only
benefit.
MERITS
Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry, former chief justice of
the Supreme Court of Pakistan, had
said that the judiciary can
intervene if the institutions
trespass their constitutional limits.
Addressing a function in the
Supreme Court on the occasion of
commencement of the new judicial
year, he said that the judiciary had
taken oath to protect the
constitution. Therefore, to check
unconstitutional steps was within
the obligations of the judiciary, he
said. He also said that the executive
did not seem satisfied with the
judicial verdicts against its
unconstitutional acts. Another
important point in the chief
justices speech was the issue of
corruption in the lower courts and
he said that corruption could not
be controlled in spite of increasing
salaries and other perks of the lower
judges.
If the speech of the chief justice
is reviewed, three important points
would come to the front. One, which
determining the constitutional
limits of the institutions is within
the power of the judiciary. Two, the
executive is not satisfied with the
judicial decisions. Three,
corruption is still prevalent in the
subordinate courts.
All these three matters are
interconnected and the judiciary is
at their center. The chief justice is
correct that fulfilling of
responsibility by the judges is
essential for ensuring peace and
stability, strengthening national
integrity, and improving
administrative affairs. When,
during the Second World War, a
dreadful picture of the countrys
situation was drawn before former
British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill said that if the courts
delivered justice, there was nothing
to worry.
IS PAKISTANS SUPREME COURT HAS
GOING OVERBOARD
Section 248(2) of the
Pakistani Constitution states:
No criminal proceedings
whatsoever shall be instituted or
continued against the President or
Governor in any Court during his
term of office. The language of the
above provision is clear, and it is a
settled principle of interpretation
that when the language of a
provision is clear, the court should
not twist or amend its language in
the garb of interpretation, but read
it as it is. Therefore it is hard to
understand how proceedings on
corruption charges (which are
clearly of a criminal nature) can be
instituted or continued against the
Pakistani President. Moreover, how
can the court remove a Prime
Minister? This is unheard of in a
democracy. The Prime Minister
holds office as long he has the
confidence of Parliament, not the
confidence of the Supreme Court. It
can be said that the Pakistani
Supreme Court, particularly its
Chief Justice, has been showing an
utter lack of restraint. This is not
expected of superior courts. In fact
the court and its Chief Justice have
been playing to the gallery for long.
It has clearly gone overboard and
flouted all canons of constitutional
jurisprudence.
THE WAY AHEAD
Since the new PM-designate,
Raja Pervez Ashraf, also has a fair
share of cases against him, the joke
in town was that efforts were on to
dig up dirt onQamar Zaman Kaira,
the cover candidate introduced
into the fray by the Pakistan
Peoples Party (PPP). In any case,
no one expects the new premier to
have an easy run. As the search for
candidates for premiership was on,
the bottom line was that only those
willing to be disqualified for five
years need apply. It is amply clear
that the PPP is determined not to
write to the Swiss authorities to
reopen graft cases against
President Asif Ali Zardari. Among
the first tasks awaiting the new
man in would be the Supreme
Court order asking that the letter
be sent, or go the Gilani way. To
many an analyst, the superior
judiciary is now attempting to do
what traditionally the military
again a non-elected state institution
assigned for itself: clean up
Pakistani politics and society. But,
according to political analyst
Hasan Askari Rizvi, if the
expanded role of non-elected
institutions offered a credible
solution, Pakistans politics
should have been very organised
and systematic after four periods
of direct and indirect military rule.
Therfore it can be said that
every part of the Constitution
should know that the Constitution
establishes a delicate balance of
power and each of the three organs
of the state the legislature, the
executive and the judiciary must
respect each other and not encroach
into each other s domain,
otherwise the system cannot
function. For now, the coup talk
may be just that talk but as all
institutions continue to jockey for
space and power in what is
essentially the nascent phase of an
evolving democracy, any attempt to
upset the apple cart will arouse
suspicion. On this count at least,
Pakistan cannot be accused of
crying wolf too often. And, the
military and the judiciary do not
have history on their side.
Md. Israr
Under the new format
approved by MHRD, admissions to
all Central government
engineering institutes will be
through a common exam,
scrapping the current system of JEE
for the IITs and the All India
Engineering Entrance Exam
(AIEEE) for other institutes. A
common merit list is to be prepared
with an unprecedented 40 per cent
weightage for Class XII board
examination marks and 30 per cent
each for two examinations JEE
Main and JEE Advanced to be
held on the same day.
The Ministry claims its main
intention is to reduce the stress of
multiple entrance exams on
students. It should have asked
students their opinion. More than
the difficulty of the exam, the stress
associated with the JEE is due to
the huge imbalance between the
number of seats and aspirants. The
proposal does nothing to change
this. In fact, the pressure now to do
well in three exams is sure to
increase stress. Also, by keeping
both exams on the same day, a
random event the candidate
falling ill, even a bus breaking
down can destroy a students
future. Whereas previously there
were options if one entrance test
went badly, the new system has an
all-or-nothing feel to it. Its no
surprise that parents are thinking
of taking the matter to court. The
Ministry also aims to re-vitalise
school education by giving more
importance to the Class XII board
examinations which, it feels, are
ignored by students. Again, had it
asked students it would have
realised why. Though nominally
the syllabi for the board
examinations and the JEE are the
same, board examination papers
are based on memory-based
learning with easy, expected
questions, while the JEEs focus is
conceptual with unexpected,
challenging questions. No JEE
question is ever repeated. Besides,
most State board examinations are
plagued by rampant copying and
question paper leaks, while the
practical examinations are
famously a farce.
MERITS OF NEW FORMAT
With class XII exams playing
a more important role in the
admission process, students in
rural areas studying in state
boards standing a better chance of
getting into national institutes.
Proponents of the exam argue that
it will make schooling more
relevant and make students focus
on their board exams as well. This
would also make students less
dependent on coaching classes
and could allow students from
New JEE Format:
Right Diagnosis, Wrong Medication
different board a better chance at
getting into national institutes. If
you are aspiring to get into an
engineering college, you could have
to write between two to three
exams, one for the IITs, the AIEEE
and the state Common Entrance
Test. Each of the exams is unique
in its nature and while the IIT is
the highest benchmark, many
students also choose to prepare
better for the state entrance exams
since they dont believe they have
a shot at it. With just a single test
students have to prepare only for
one exam and are graded based on
it. IITs are used to choosing
students from their own admission
process, which will be diluted with
the greater importance of Class XII
examinations. Faculty and critics
argue that given the autonomy of
the IITs this will prevent them from
distinguishing the students better
suited for the course and amounts
to the government interfering into
the functioning of an institution
that has been largely allowed to
function independently.
DEMERITS OF NEW FORMAT
While class XII exams will
become important, the two IIT
exams the JEE main and JEE
advanced- will be the main factors
that will decide admissions and
they will not be easy enough for a
student who is best prepared for a
examination set by a state
education board. It may only
increase further dependence on
coaching classes. IIT faculty who
are opposing the single exam
believe the single exam will only
increase stress among the students
since it will now be a make or break
situation for them. Also critics have
argued having two separate tests
on a single day will not help. Former
IITians and alumni claim the new
format would also significantly
dilute the quality of students
entering the IIT. Each of the boards
has a different grading system and
marks across each of the state
boards and national boards for
Class XII examinations vary
greatly. With standards of
education and grading differing
across education boards, IIT faculty
and critics of the new system
believe it may give students who
do well in the boards an undue
advantage over those who may be
better suited for IITs. The IITs will
continue to function autonomously
and continue to take its own
decisions in all other matters. The
new one exam system allows a
level playing field for all students
and will help resolve the students
woes of having to study for various
exams.
IIT-JEE aspirants constitute
only a fraction of the total number
of students taking the Class XII
examination across the country. A
total of 4.79 lakh students took the
IIT-JEE this year. This number
includes many who graduated
from Class XII last year. So, the
number of Class XII students
appearing in IIT-JEE is even lower
than this number. Even if one
assumes all of them are from Class
XII, this number works out to be less
than 6 per cent (5.79 per cent) of
students enrolled in Class XII. All
the debate ignores the 94 per cent.
As far as coaching classes
concern, forget the 40 per cent
weight, even if Class XII scores get
100 per cent weight, it wont wipe
out coaching classes. For the
simple reason that there are too
many good students vying for too
few seats available in the quality
higher education system. It begets
anxiety among students and their
parents to leave no stone (coaching
class) unturned to make it. It is a
supply problem. The number of
seats (about 10,000 in IITs) falls far
short of students (about 20,000
selected for counseling) found
suitable to take that course.
Students coming through JEE
were no longer as exceptional and
talented as before. The villain was
quickly identified: coaching classes
that promote drill and rote rather
than thought and creativity. So the
governments policy prescription:
lets underline the importance of the
schooling system which ostensibly
promotes original thinking, lets
tweak the entrance examination to
factor in Class XII marks. The
question is why maximum
students do & parents prefer a
private school over a government
school? Why do students and their
parents go to such lengths as to
exhaust their meager savings to
pay for coaching even after a good
Class XII score? Will factoring in
Class XII marks change this? The
fact is that reforming the IIT
entrance is way off the mark when
it comes to solving the original
crisis: the school system.
There are other reasons why
the IIT entrance procedure needs a
major revamp. The present
selection system depends on
machismo in physics, chemistry
and mathematics ideally suited
for coaching classes, condemning
young boys and girls to a
concentration camp atmosphere
for two years or so. This is the
period these youngsters should
spend exploring their interest and
aptitudes but are prevented from
doing so. This straitjacketing is
probably filtering out the
innovative and curious ones who
hate such narrow perspectives,
ensuring that IITs are denied some
young Indians who might be truly
interested in path breaking work.
It is time for a rethink on the
objective of the selection procedure
for IITs. However, the HRD
ministry hasnt solved the problem.
It has only complicated it with the
new common entrance
examination, which will require
students to prepare equally for the
Class XII board exam, JEE Main
and Advanced. The plan has been
riddled with conceptual flaws
right from the start first, the HRD
ministry pushed for a common test
to provide a SAT-like standard.
However, the SAT aims to separate
academic ability from family
background or quality of schooling
why should school scores be
bundled into the final assessment
for engineering schools? After some
give and take with the IITs, the
ministry has conceded that Class
XII marks would only be used as a
filter for them, and not be a part of
the overall assessment. It clearly
needs much more dialogue with the
IIT faculty and administration
listening, not talking before it
rolls out these drastic changes. IITs
have a formidable reputation in the
country and abroad for producing
outstanding graduates over the last
five decades. The reasons for this
includes the selection of high
performing students through the
JEE, which the IITs have run
without blemish. This has
happened because those running
the system take pride in their work
as loyal members of the IIT system.
IITs have also developed
reasonably democratic systems for
academic functioning and selection
of course content, fair and open
systems for grading and
evaluation, and student
management. Faculty selection and
promotion processes are also
reasonable considering the
environment we have to operate in.
A more robust solution would
be to enhance the supply of quality
seats at the undergraduate level,
not only in engineering or
medicine but also in law, commerce,
humanities and social sciences.
Take away their (IITs/ NITs/ IIITs)
luxury to select from the plentiful
and force them to compete with
others to attract the most
suitable. This will also iron out the
skew that these handful of
institutions create. The institutional
response to the hegemony of the IITs
lies in creating similar international
brands in other streams:
humanities, law, commerce, social
sciences among others. This will
force them to compete to attract
suitable students. This, in fact, will
revive interest in an
interdisciplinary school
curriculum instead of the current
distortion towards Physics-
Chemistry-Math/ Biology. The
bottomline is that, first, it is not part
of the IITs/ NITs/ IIITs mandate to
strengthen the school system;
second, a change of examination
pattern, as is being envisaged, is not
going to revive the school system.
There is an impasse at hand
and it must be resolved amicably.
Those protesting from the IITs have
a point that they must have a
role in selecting their students. Any
university should, as long as it is
done within the concepts of fair
play, social justice and societal
obligations. An ideal entrance
procedure should include high
school performance, marks in a
common all-India quantitative
entrance examination and, if
desired, any institution should be
able to set their own entrance test/
criteria also. If an institution wants
to conduct its own test it must be
very different from the current JEE
and not require students to prepare
too much. It must test aptitude and
not just mathematical prowess as
that would already have been
tested by the common all-India test.
It would have to be free from
language and class biases.
Devising such a test would need
collaboration with national and
international education and
testing experts and will take time,
but it would free IIT faculty from
wasting their time on the JEE and
focus on what will actually benefit
their institutions. It should be
possible to design IIT specific
aptitude test procedures within the
next year. If the IITs agree to such a
change in entrance procedures the
MHRD should agree to introduce
the new system in 2014. If not, the
current proposal of MHRD should
stay. As for the JEE, it needs to go.
Sandeep Dogra
Help Line No. 011- 45151781
14TH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
The date for the 14th
Presidential election was notified
by the Election Commission of
India on 11 June 2012. In
accordance with the sub-section (1)
of section (4) of the Presidential and
Vice Presidential Elections Act,
1952, the Election Commission of
India fixed the schedule for the
presidential election 2012. Article
52 of the Indian constitution states
that there shall be a President of
India. The executive powers of the
Union shall be vested in the
President. He, as the head of a state,
symbolises the nation. Article 55 (3)
of the Indian Constitution provides
for the manner of the Presidential
election in India. The presidential
election is held in accordance with
the system of Proportional
representation by means of Single
transferable vote method. The
Voting takes place by secret ballot
system.
Article 324 of the Constitution
read with the Presidential and Vice
Presidential Elections Act, 1952,
and the Presidential and Vice-
Presidential Elections Rules, 1974
vests the superintendence,
direction and control of the conduct
of election to the office of the
President of India in the Election
Commission of India. The Election
Commission is mandated to ensure
that the election to the office of the
President of India, which is the
highest elective office in the nation,
must be a free and fair election and
the Commission is taking all
National Issues
necessary steps for discharging its
constitutional responsibility.
However, in case of any dispute
regarding the Presidential election,
the Supreme Court of India decides
the matter.
As per the article 54 of the
Indian constitution, the President
is elected by electoral college
comprising the elected members of
both Houses of Parliament, and
elected members of the Legislative
Assemblies of all States including
National Capital Territory of Delhi
and the Union Territory of
Puducherry. The nominated
members of Rajya Sabha, Lok
Sabha and Legislative Assemblies
of the States cannot participate in
the election. The Electoral College
for the Presidential poll 2012 is
4896. A total of 776 Members of
Parliament and 4120 Members of
Legislative Assemblies will
participate in presidential election
2012.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE
An electoral colleg1e is a set
of electors who collectively elect the
President of India. It consists of
elected members of both Houses of
Parliament, and elected members of
the Legislative Assemblies of all
States including National Capital
Territory of Delhi and the Union
Territory of Puducherry.
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
SYSTEM
In the ordinary straight voting
system a candidate who secures the
highest number of votes is declared
elected, while under the
Proportional Representation
system any member who secures
the necessary quota of votes is
declared elected. There are several
ways of finding out the quota, but
the most common method is to
divide the total number of valid
votes cast by the total number of
seats in the constituency plus one
and add one to the quotient.
SI NGLE TRANSFERABLE VOTE
SYSTEM
The Single Transferable Vote
means that each elector has only
one vote, irrespective of the number
of seats to be filled up. For instance,
if there are six seats to be filled up,
the elector does not cast six votes
but indicates six successive
preferences, by marking his first
preference and the succeeding
preferences with the appropriate
numerals against the name of
candidates printed on his ballot
paper.
SINGUR LAND REHABILITATION AND
DEVELOPMENT ACT, 2011
SCRAPPED
The Calcutta High Court on
22 June 2012, held the Singur Land
Rehabilitation and Development
Act, 2011 as unconstitutional and
void. The legislation enabled the
government to recover the disputed
Singur land from Tata Motors, who
was leased 997 acre of land at
Singur in Hooghly district by
previous left front government in
the state. The Singur Land
Rehabilitation and Development
Act was passed by the West Bengal
state assembly in 2011 when
Mamata Banrjee led Trinamool
Congress swept to power in May
2011. The legislation which
justified the state governments
land re-acquisition drive,
empowered the government to
recover 1000 acres of land at the
abandoned Tata Nano factory site
in Singur.
SINGUR LAND DISPUTE
Singur land dispute surfaced
in May 2006, following the left front
governments decision to lease 997
acre land for 99 years, at Singur in
Hooghly district, about 40 km from
Kolkata, for The Tata Motors Nano
car project. The party demanded
the return of 400 acre of land to
farmers reluctant to give land for
the project. Following the dispute
and the political hindrances
occurring in the project the Tata
Motors decided to move to Sanand
in Gujarat in 2008 to keep its
ambitious Nano project going. The
company, however, kept possession
of the leased land at Singur. When
the Trinmool Congress swept to the
power in May 2011, throwing long
standing left front government out
of power, the Chief Minister
Mamata Banarjee passed the
Singur Land Rehabilitation and
Development Act, which enabled
the government to reclaim the
Singur land from the Tata Motors.
Tata Motors moved to the Calcutta
High Court against the legislation.
The single judge bench of Calcutta
High Court upheld her decision in
its ruling held on 28 June 2011.
Perturbed of the ruling, Tata
Motors challenged the verdict
before the Division Bench of
Calcutta High Court comprising
Justice Kalyan Jyoti Sengupta and
Justice Joymalya Bagchi on 1
November 2011.
4.5 PER CENT SUB-QUOTA FOR
MINORITIES SET ASIDE
The Andhra Pradesh High
Court on 28 May 2012 invalidated
the 4.5 per cent sub-quota for
minorities carved out of the 27 per
cent reservation for OBCs by the
Union government. A high court
division bench of Chief Justice
Madan Lokur and Justice P V
Sanjay Kumar quashed the sub-
quota as it observed that the Union
governments move was based on
religious lines and not any other
consideration. The court was
hearing to a Public Interest
Litigation (PIL) filed by backward
classs leader R Krishnaiah against
the sub-quota.
The Union Government will
move to the Supreme Court against
the high court verdict. The court
also refuted the Union
Governments claim that the
decision to provide sub-quota to
the minorities was based on their
backwardness and not on religious
grounds. The bench observed that
the very use of the words
belonging to minorities or for
minorities indicates that the sub-
quota has been carved out only on
religious grounds and not on any
other intelligible basis.
GUIDELINES FOR THE FOREI GN
UNIVERSITIES ENTERING INDIA
According to the new set of
guidelines approved by University
Grants Commission (UGC) on 2
June 2012, only global top 500
universities will be allowed to start
their operation in India. The new
guidelines set the norms for the
foreign universities aspiring to
enter into agreement with Indian
universities for offering education
programmes in the country. As per
the new guidelines the foreign
varsities entering into tie-ups with
Indian partners should be ranked
among the top 500 by the Times
Higher Education World
University Ranking or by Shanghai
Jiaotong University of the top 500
universities. Institutes who fail to
abide by the new UGC guidelines
would be suitably penalised which
also includes stoppage of grants
from the UGC. The UGC came up
with the new guidelines following
the rising concerns among the
educationists in the country over
the quality of foreign institutions
which is tying up with Indian
colleges offering separate
education programmes.
20000 CRORE RUPEES PROPOSAL
APPROVED BY MOD
The Union Ministry of
Defense (MoD) on 22 June 2012
approved defense proposals worth
over 20000 crore rupees for the
procurement of defense
equipments for the Indian army.
The proposals were given the nod
of the government in a meeting
chaired by Defense Minister AK
Antony. The government in the
meeting cleared an IAF proposals
worth over 8500 crore rupees for
procuring 14 Dornier aircraft and
setting up a nationwide
communication network and guns
for navy and the coast guard ships.
Besides, the proposal for procuring
eight regiments of QR-SAMs worth
over 10000 crore rupees was also
approved by the defense ministry.
The decision to accelerate the
defense procurements came
following the former Army Chief
Gen VK Singhs letter to the Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, in
which he had raised serious
questions over the preparedness of
Indias defense system. In his letter
to the Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh, the former Army Chief had
blamed the extensive process for
arms procurement for the poor
operational capabilities of the 1.13
million-strong Indian
army.General Singh had pointed
out that 97 per cent of the
equipment with the Army Air
Defense was outdated.
DISSMISSAL OF LT. GEN. AVADESH
PRAKASH RATIFIED
Chief of Army Staff General
VK Singh on 21 May 2012 ratified
a court martials decision to
dismiss former military secretary
Lt. Gen. Avadesh Prakash from
service after he was found guilty
by an army court for his role in the
Sukna land scam case. The
dismissal will deprive Lt. Gen.
Prakash of all the benefits like
pension and any privilege attached
with military service. Prakash is the
senior-most officer to have been
awarded this punishment by the
army. The General Court Martial
(GCM) had announced its decision
to dismiss Lt. Gen. (retired) Prakash
in December 2011. He was found
guilty of abusing his position under
Section 45 (conduct unbecoming of
his position as an officer) and
Section 52 (intent to defraud) of the
Army Act by the General Court
Martial at 51 sub-area of the Army
station at Narengi in Guwahati.
The court martial was
conducted when an Army court
found Lt. Gen. Prakash guilty of
misusing his post in the land scam.
Prakash was accused of illegal
transfer of 71 acres of land adjacent
to the Sukna military station near
Siliguri in West Bengal to a private
realtor for constructing an
educational institution in 2008. Lt.
Gen. Prakash is the third Lt Gen
rank officer to have been given the
punishment in a corruption-related
case. Earlier Lt Gen S.K. Sahni was
removed from service given his role
in the ration scam and Lt Gen P.K.
Rath was given a punishment for
his involvement in the Sukna case.
While Prakash and Sahni were
punished after their retirement,
Rath was in service when he was
rebuked. Sukna land scam came
into public notice in 2008 when the
alleged move to transfer the land
in Siliguri to a private educational
trust came out in the open.
Following the grave allegations
against the top army officials the
army began disciplinary
proceedings against Lt. Gen.
Prakash and Lt. Gen. Rath among
other top officials.
IT IS MANDATORY TO LABEL GM
FOODS
The Ministry of Consumer
Affairs in its gazette notification
published on 5 June 2012 made it
mandatory to make labelling of
every package containing
genetically modified food from 1
January 2013. The ministry in the
notification noted that every
package containing the genetically
modified food shall bear at the top
of its principal display panel the
words GM. The ministrys move
will affect the numerous GM
products which enters into the
Indian market for sale. The move is
aimed at educating consumers and
make them aware of GM products,
much in the manner that there is
labelling to distinguish non-
vegetarian food from vegetarian.
Under the current practice
Importers or exporters rarely
display the GM label on the
product. Under the new rule the
consumers will have the liberty to
make a choice on whether they
want to buy the GM products or not.
GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS
Genetically modified foods
also known as GM foods or biotech
foods are foods derived from
genetically modified organisms.
The process includes the
introduction of certain specific
changes into the DNA of
Genetically modified organisms by
genetic engineering techniques.The
GM foods were first introduced in
the market in year 1996.
SUPREME COURT REFUSED TO STAY
ON ANDHRA PRADESH HIGH COURT
ORDER
The Supreme Court of India
on 11 June 2012 refused to entertain
the Union Governments petition
seeking a stay on an Andhra
Pradesh high court order which
quashed a 4.5 per cent sub-quota
for minorities in educational
institutions and government jobs
in the existing OBC quota. The two-
judge Supreme Court bench of
Justices K.S.Radhakrishnan and
J.S.Khehar refused to stay the
Andhra Pradesh High Court order
as it observed the government did
not present any material to show
how it had arrived at a figure of 4.5
percent reservation. As per the
benchs directions the reports by the
Union Government are to be
produced on 13 June 2012.
The Congress-led UPA
government on 22 December 2011,
ahead of the key assembly polls in
the five states including UP in
February-March 2012, had
announced the 4.5 per cent sub-
quota for socially and
educationally backward minority
communities. It envisaged carving
this sub-quota out of the existing
27 per cent quota for Other
Backward Classes (OBCs). On 28
May 2012, an Andhra Pradesh
High Courts division bench had
struck down the governments sub-
quota for minorities, and held that
the Centre acted in a casual
manner. The High Court said that
the government Office
Memorandum (OM) creating the
sub-quota was based on religious
grounds and not on any other
intelligible consideration.
RS. 1,500-CR. PLAN FOR CENSUS
TOWNS
If a rural area boasts a high
population well above 5,000,
sometimes as high as 20,000
with most of its workforce in non-
farm jobs, is it a village or a town?
For almost 4,000 such areas, the
definition is unclear: the census
calls them towns, but since they
have gram panchayats rather than
municipal corporations, the
government seems to consider them
rural. The government has now
launched a Rs. 1,500-crore revamp
of the PURA (Provision of Urban
Amenities for Rural Areas) scheme
to bring basic infrastructure to
these areas that are falling through
the cracks of the rural-urban divide.
BIG PHENOMENON
This is the big phenomenon
of the 2011 Census, says Rural
Development Minister Jairam
Ramesh. The number of statutory
towns [with a municipal
corporation] has stayed almost the
same from 2001. The number of
villages is almost the same. But the
number of so-called census towns
has grown from just 1,362 in 2001
to 3,894 now. A census town is
defined as a place with a
population of over 5,000, a
population density of more than
400 per square kilometre, with
three-fourths of its male workforce
employed in non-agricultural jobs.
We have schemes for rural
infrastructure, and schemes for
urban infrastructure, but neither of
them apply for these trishanku
caught in the middle areas, added
Mr. Ramesh. The Planning
Commission has now agreed to
grant Rs. 1,500 crore during the
12th Five Year Plan period to fund
a public-private partnership
scheme to bring water supply,
sewerage, drainage, solid waste
management and street lighting to
such unofficial urban clusters,
mostly in the six States Uttar
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal,
Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and
Kerala which have seen the
highest growth of census towns.
KALAM SCHEME REVISITED
The scheme is a revamp of the
former President A.P.J. Abdul
Kalams brainchild, PURA, which
was initially aimed at providing
city amenities to
villages. In its latest
avatar, PURA 2.0 is
focussing on the
development of 50
to 60 potential
growth centres
such as census
towns. Initial pilot
projects have begun
in Kerala, with eight
other projects
awaiting final
approvals from State governments.
Earlier this week, the Rural
Development Ministry invited
expressions of interest for 10 to 15
more projects. Under the scheme,
the Central government will grant
Rs. 40 crore for each project with
the private player expected to invest
Rs. 20-30 crore. Another Rs. 80
crore is expected to come from the
convergence of existing schemes.
Gram panchayats will sign
agreements with private players to
build and maintain the
infrastructure for a 10-year period
during which they can recoup their
investment, says the Ministrys
advertisement.
ON I MPLEMENTATI ON OF
DHARMADHIKARI COMMITTEE REPORT
A PANEL CONSTITUTED
The Union Government of
India on 1 June 2012 announced to
constitute an implementation panel
to look into the ways of
implementing the Dharmadhikari
committee report on Air India and
erstwhile Indian Airlines merger.
The implementation panel will
suggest the government of ways to
implement the recommendations
of Dharmadhikari Committee on
issues including pay, allowances
and career progression structure.
The implementation committee
will submit its report within 45
days of its constitution. The
committee will also be given the
task of level mapping of
employees of Air India and
erstwhile Indian Airlines.
The four-member
Dharmadhikari committee on
integration of nearly 29000
employees of Air India and Indian
Airlines was headed by former
Supreme Court judge Justice D. M.
Dharmadhikari. The committee
had submitted its report in January
2012. The committee had consulted
all the concerned parties including
pilots and management staffs
before submitting its findings. The
committee was constituted in
March 2011. Some of the major
recommendations of Dharma-
dhikari committee are as follows:
Air India should continue to
maintain two separate lines of
seniority for pilots belonging
to the pre-merger Indian
Airlines and Air India
Pilots of both erstwhile
carriers must be allowed to fly
aircraft of all types
A 10-15 per cent salary cut for
pilots and engineers to bring
their salaries on par with
industry standards
Uniform salaries for both sets
of pilots
Cross-utilisation of pilots,
which means Indian Airlines
pilots can fly Dreamliners,
and Air India pilots can fly
Airbus aircraft after obtaining
requisite endorsements and
training
The Government of India in
2007 announced the merger of Air
India with Indian Airlines.
Subsequently a new company
called the National Aviation
Company of India Limited (NACIL)
was established, into which both
Air India (along with Air India
Express) and Indian Airlines
(along with Alliance Air) was
merged. On 27 February 2011, Air
India and Indian Airlines merged
along with their subsidiaries to
form Air India Limited. The merger
did not go down well with the
national carrier as it got trapped
under a huge debt of 10 billion
dollar.
Besides the post merger days
have also been marred with the
reports of controversies and rifts
among the management. The pilots
of Air India have been on indefinite
strike since 8 May 2012.
UPSCPORTALS
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International Issues
PAKISTAN PRIME MINISTER YUSUF
RAJA GILANI DEBARRED FROM
OFFICE
The SC of Pakistan on 19 June
2012, debarred Pakistan Prime
Minister Yusuf Raja Gilani from his
office. The courts ruling also
disqualified Gilani as the member
of the National Assembly, the lower
house of the Majlis-e-Shoora
(Parliament). Gilani was convicted
for violating the article 63(1) (g)
(contempt of court) of the
President Asif Ali Zardari. The
three-judge Bench of the apex
Pakistani court headed by Chief
Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry held Gilani, Pakistans
longest serving Prime Minister,
ineligible for the post since 26 April
2012 when the court awarded him
a symbolic 30-second sentence for
the contempt of court. The court
also instructed the President to take
necessary measures under the
Constitution to ensure
continuation of the democratic
process through the parliamentary
system of government.
Earlier the Speaker of
Pakistans National Assembly,
Fehmida Mirza had ruled that
Gilani cant be disqualified as the
PM of the country as the conviction
for the contempt of court awarded
to him does not merit
Disqualification. Born on 9 June
1952, Yusuf Raja Gilani, had been
the member of Pakistans National
Assembly from Multan-IV
constituency since 1988. In 2008
general elections he led Pakistan
People Party (PPP) to a victory, to
take over as the 16th Prime Minister
of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
THE CASE AGAINST GILANI
Pakistan had instructed the Prime
Minster Yusuf Raja Gilani to ask
Swiss authorities to reopen cases
of multi-million dollar graft cases
against the President Asif Ali
Zardari, which the Prime Minister
refused to follow, citing
constitutional immunity enjoyed
by the president as the reason. Asif
Ali Zardari was accused of
laundering an estimated 12 million
dollar, received as the kickback by
the companies looking for customs
inspection contracts, to his Swiss
Bank account, when his wife
Benazir Ali Bhutto was the Prime
Minister of the country during
1990s.
ANTONIS SAMARA SWORN IN AS THE
PRIME MINISTER OF GREECE
Antonis Samara, the New
Democracy Party leader sworn in
as the Prime Minister of Greece on
20 June 2012. Samarass centre-
right New Democracy party
bagged 129 seats of 300 in the
parliamentary elections held on 17
June 2012. The New Democracy
Party formed the new government
with the support of socialist party
Pasok (with 33 seats) and the
Democratic Left party (with 17
seats). The fresh elections were held
in Greece following the political
parties failure to reach an
agreement on the results of the first
election held on 6 May 2012.
Greece has been passing
through the severe economic crisis
which started in 2008. The country
which makes nearly 2 per cent of
the gross economic output of the
Euro zone has seriously been
contemplating the option of pulling
out of the group. The exit of Greece
from the eurozone raises a serious
question over the future of
European Union as many larger
European economies such as
Spain, Italy, Potugal are also likely
to follow in the steps of Greece. To
rescue Greece out of the economic
crisis the European Union and
International Monetary Fund had
granted a 110 billion Euro package
to the country in 2010, followed by
a 130 billion Euro package in 2012.
THE GREECE CRISIS
Greece over the past ten years
took a massive amount of loan from
different sources, to keep its
numerous public expenditure and
social security programs going. But
hit hard by the 2008-09 economic
recession the country failed to pay
back its loan to lenders.
s
Hence, it defaulted in its
mandatory loan repayments. Since
the country is the part of Eurozone,
the economic catastrophe which hit
the nation, directly affected the
entire Eurozone economy. Though,
Germany and France, the two
largest economies of Eurozone,
bailed Greece out in 2010 it again
slipped in the same situation
forcing other EU nations to plan
another bailout for the nation.
PAKISTAN TEST FIRED NUCLEAR
CAPABLE BABUR MISSILE
Pakistan successfully test-
fired the indigenously developed
Hatf-VII (Babur) cruise missile on
5 June 2012. Hatf-VII is capable of
carrying both nuclear and
conventional warheads. The
missile is highly accurate Pakistani-
developed cruise missile with a
range of 700 km. According to an
Inter-Services Public Relations
(ISPR) statement, the missile was
launched from a multi-tube Missile
Launch Vehicle (MLV). The missile
significantly enhances the
targeting and employment options
of the Babur weapon system in both
the conventional and nuclear
modes.
President Asif Ali Zardari
and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani praised the scientists for the
successful test. Earlier on 29 May
2012 Pakistan had successfully
carried out the test of indigenously
developed Short Range Surface to
Surface Multi Tube Missile Hatf IX
(NASR) followed by the test of
nuclear-capable cruise missile
Hatf-VIII (Raad) whose test was
conducted on 31 May 2012.
AUNG SAAN SUU KYI VI SI TED
THAILAND
Myanmars pro-democracy
leader Aung Saan Suu Kyi carried
out her first trip outside the country
since 1988. Suu Kyi, who is also
Myanmars principal opposition
leader, visited Thailand as her first
foreign visit after she was elected
to the countrys parliament
following the by-elections. The
Nobel laureate arrived Thailand on
29 May 2012 on a six-day visit.
During her visit to the neighboring
country Suu Kyi addressed the
world leaders at the World
Economic Forum. She also visited
a sprawling camp on Thailands
border which is home to up to
140000 ethnic Karen refugees.
After her trip to Thailand she
would visit to Europe in June 2012.
During her visit to Europe, she is
also intended to formally receive
her Nobel Prize which she had
won in 1991. Suu Kyi will also visit
her family residing in the UK. She
is also scheduled to address the
British parliament on 21 June 2012.
Earlier Suu Kyi had refused to leave
the country during brief periods of
freedom as she was afraid that she
would not be allowed to return to
the country again. Suu Kyi, who
had been a political prisoner for
nearly 15 years went on to become
the Myanmars most revered leader
in past 25 years after she
spearheaded a tough battle against
the tyranny of the autocratic
government of the country. Globally
acclaimed pro-democracy leader,
Suu Kyi was at the forefront of
Myanmars quest for democracy as
she relentlessly fought to bring out
the much needed political reforms
in nthe country. Her persistent
striving for the democracy in the
country drew the attention of the
world community and got her the
global support in the struggle
against the Junta government. Suu
Kyis life long battle for democracy
did not prove worthless as the
military controlled government
finally gave in to her demand and
announced the political reforms in
the country. Suu Kyis victory in the
by-elections, held in April 2012
was consisdered to be one of the
biggest milestones achieved by the
country. Although the country is
still being ruled by the military
controlled government, the recent
political developments hold a great
significance and being consisered
as the revolutionary step towards
the complete democracy.
NEPAL SC ISSUED SHOW CAUSE
NOTICE TO GOVERNMENT
Nepals Supreme Court
issued a show cause notice to the
government over the dissolution of
the Constituent Assembly and the
announcement of fresh elections
(scheduled to take place on 22
November 2012). The bench also
called for written clarification from
the government within ten days.
The single bench of the Apex court
of Justice Tahir Ali Ansari ruled
that a special bench should hear
the matter as it bore serious
constitutional questions and public
concern. The political parties called
for fresh elections after they failed
to promulgate a new constitution
by the 27 May 2012 deadline.
MOHAMMED MURSI WON THE
EGYPTIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Mohammed Mursi, leader of
the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP),
on 24 June 2012 was declared
victorious in Egypts historical
presidential election. Mursi bagged
51.73 per cent of the total 13.23
million votes cast, while his closest
rival Ahmed Shafiq, the former
Egyptian PM and the independent
candidate, polled 48.3 per cent
votes. The FJP is an independent
political party, which enjoys a
strong political support from the
Muslim Brotherhood, the largest
and best-organized political group
in Egypt.
The first Presidential election,
which was alo the first free
elections in the history of the
country, was held on 23 and 24 May
2012 followed by the main election,
held on 16 and 17 June 2012. The
presidential election 2012 was the
first presidential election in the
country after the 2011 Egyptian
revolution during the Arab Spring,
which ousted the autocratic
president Hosne Mubarak from the
office.
THE TIMELINE
Egypt, which was officially
named the Arab Republic of Egypt
on 18 June 1953, has remained
under constant autocratic rule
since 1967 (barring the 18-month
break in 1980). Between 1981 and
2011, the country was governed by
authoritarian ruler Mohamed
Hosni Mubarak, who rose to power
following the assassination of
President Mohammed Anwar El-
Sadat. But the thunderous Arab
Uprising in 2011, which led to a
wide spread movement for
democracy in Egypt and several
other Arab states, forced Mubarak
to step down after reining in the
country for 30 years. Mubarak, who
stepped down on 11 February 2011,
entrusted the power to the army led
by Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.
The 18-day unrest in the country
claimed lives of about 850 people.
After taking the rein of the country,
the Army scrapped the constitution
and dissolved parliament. It also
promised to reinstate democracy in
the country by holding a
nationwide Presidential election.
But a long delay from the military
governments side in setting up the
democratic government, caused
thousands of people resume the
protest against the government. On
29 June 2011, in a violent protest
held at Tehrir Square of Cairo, the
place which symbolized the Arab
Uprising, more than 1000 people
were left wounded and score others
left dead.
On 28 and 29 November,
Egypt held its first post-uprising
parliamentary election, which saw
Islamist parties claiming the
victory on nearly 75 per cent of
seats. On 23 and 24 May 2012 the
country held its first its first free
presidential election followed by
the main election which was held
on 16 and 17 June 2012. Putting an
end to the 18-month long political
turmoil in the country the Muslim
Brotherhood affiliated Freedom
and Justice Party leader
Mohammed Mursi won the
election.
IMPACT OF THE MOHAMMAD MURSIS
VICTORY
The victory of Muslim
Brotherhood candidate
Mohammad Mursi has virtually
delighted the entire Arab world.
Being the first Islamic President of
the country, Mursi is expected to
cooperate in a better manner with
other Islamic nations in the region.
The victory of Mursi also holds a
larger significance in the context of
Arab- Israel conflict.
The poll verdict, which
appeared highly satisfactory for the
Palestinians, caused the same
amount of anxiety among the
Israeli establishment. Islamist
leaders rise to power certainly
perturbed the Israel and its allies
in the world, which had long been
at loggerheads with Arab countries.
Given the fact that Palestinian
organization Hamas is popularly
called the daughter of the Muslim
Brotherhood and has always
shared a warm tie with the mother
organization, the two countries are
likely to team up against Isreal on
regional issues which will
apparently intensify the hatred
politics in the middle-east.
SEVENTH G20 SUMMIT HELD IN LOS
CABOS, MEXICO
The 7
th
G20 summit took place
on 18,19 June 2012.Mexico chaired
the summit. The summit took place
in the city of Los Cabos in Mexico.
It is a twenty member brigade, the
summit includes countries, South
Africa, Canada, India, Mexico,
United States, China, Japan, South
Korea, Russia, Turkey, Argentina,
Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi
Arabia, European Union, France,
Germany, Italy, United Kingdom,
Australia. The objectives and
highlights of the summit is as
follows :
THE G 20 DECLARATION
The leaders of the worlds
largest economies will help in
boosting growth and job
creation to repair the
wounded global economy
because of the European
financial crisis.
The statement also included
the importance of easing the
Spanish Crisis.
The Summit declaration also
included investment in
infrastructure in the
developing countries, this
decision would help in
achieving global growth
which was hauled due to the
falling state of the world
economy and the Eurozone
crisis.
All the Euro members of the G
20 will indulge in necessary
policy measures to not only
safe guard the integrity, but
also stabilize the whole area.
This would be done only by
breaking the feedback loop
between the sovereigns and
the banks.
The summit has also
recognized the progress made
by China in market-
determined exchanged rates.
The summit has singled out
Saudi Arabia, by bringing in
a Saudi pledge to keep the oil
prices at bay and low. This is
a step to ensure global
economic well being.
European Commission
President Jose Manuel
Barroso and European
Council President Herman
Van Rompuy asked markets to
focus on a European summit
at the end of the month. It
would eventually help the
continent move deeper and
help the economic and
political integration to match
its single currency.
The 14-page statement
emphasized the need for
growth because this is the
only way they will solve the
debt problem of the Eurozone.
The non-European members
of the G20 have sent a message
to Europe that it has to find a
way that the Eurozones
finances can be supervised by
a triumvirate comprising the
European Central Bank, the
IMF and the EU.
INDIAS CONTRIBUTION
Owing to the debt loaded 17
nation Euro zone, India on 19
June 2012 announced a $10
Billion contribution to the
already existing IMFs $430
Billion financial money.
The announcement was made
by Manmohan Singh, Prime
Minister, India in the Seventh
Summit, G 20 , Mexico.
The amount was contributed
to the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) for the bailout
fund, that would help them
ease off a little burden from the
debt scenario.
SEVENTH G 20 AND G 20S HISTORY
The seventh G 20 take took
place in the Mexican resort of
Los Cabos. The seventh
summit was headed by
Mexicos President, Felipe de
Jess Caldern Hinojosa.
The G 20 comprises the heads
of the State or the
Government.
The G 20 was first proposed
by former Prime Minister of
Canada, Paul Martin.
The next G20 Summit is
scheduled in 2013 with
Russia as the new chair.
The Group of Twenty, or G20,
is the premier forum for
international cooperation on the
most important aspects of the
international economic and
financial agenda. It brings together
the worlds major advanced and
emerging economies.The G20
includes 19 country members and
the European Union, which
together represent around 90% of
global GDP, 80% of global trade and
two-thirds of the worlds
population.The G 20 started in the
year 1999, but it has been regular
only since 2008.
HOSNI MUBARAK SERVED WITH LIFE
TERM
An Egyptian court awarded
former President Hosni Mubarak
with life imprisonment on 2 June
2012. The former autocrat was
convicted given his involvement in
the murder of protesters during the
uprising which dethroned him in
2011.
Mubaraks former interior
minister Habib al-Adly was also
awarded with the life sentence. The
court, however, acquitted
Mubaraks son Alaa and Gamal,
due to the expiry of a statute of
limitations. They were being
prosecuted in a case of corruption.
Mubarak was also acquitted in one
of the corruption cases. The trial
against Mubarak began in August
2011.
Mubarak was the only
autocrat who was dethroned from
his post during the Arab Spring.
The former president along with
former interior minister Habib al-
Adly and six others were charged
with the killing of nearly 850 people
during the 18-day Egyptian
uprising in early 2011. Hosni
Mubarak served as the fourth
President of Egypt from 1981 to
2011. Before being escalated to the
post of president he also served as
the deputy of President Anwar El
Sadat from 1975 to 1981. Following
the assassination of President
Anwar El Sadat in 1981 Mubarak
became the President of Egypt and
remained on the position for nearly
30 years, making him the longest
serving president of Egypt.
FATOU BENSOUDA APPOINTED CHIEF
PROSECUTOR OF INTERNATIONAL
CRIMINAL COURT
Gambian lawyer Fatou
Bensouda was sworn in on 15 June
2012 as the International Criminal
Courts new chief prosecutor.
Bensouda was elected at the latest
session of the Assembly of States
Parties to the Rome Statute (ASP)
in December 2011 for a nine-year
term.
Born on 31 January 1961 in
Gambia, Bensouda is the first
woman and the first African to be
appointed as the chief prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court,
which is investigating 15 cases in
seven countries, all of them
African. She also served as a
Deputy Prosecutor in charge of the
Prosecutions Division of the ICC
since 2004.
Bensouda is the recipient of
the ICJ International Jurists Award
(2009), which was conferred on her
by President of India Pratibha
Devisingh Patil. Bensouda was
given this award for her
contributions to criminal law both
at the national and International
level.
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT
The International Criminal
Court (ICC) is an independent
international organisation, which
has been set up to prosecute
individuals for genocide, crimes
against humanity, war crimes. The
Court is is governed by the Rome
Statute. The Rome statute was
adopted on 17 July 1998 by120
States for establishing the
permanent International Criminal
Court. The Statute entered into force
on 1 July 2002 after ratification by
60 countries. Separate from the
United Nations system it is the first
permanent, treaty based,
international criminal court
established to prosecute the
perpetrators of the most serious
crimes of concern to the
international community.
The court has its permanant
seating at The Hague in the
Netherlands. The Courts expenses
are funded primarily by its 120
member States. It also receives
voluntary contributions from
governments, international
organisations, individuals,
corporations and other entities.
SCO SUMMIT 2012 CONCLUDED IN
BEIJING
The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) 2012
concluded in Beijing on 7 June
2012, with member states agreeing
to further cooperation in a variety
of fields. Chinese President Hu Jin
Tao, Russian President Vladimir
Putin, Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kyrgyz
President Almazbek Atambayev,
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon
and Uzbek President Islam
Karimov, Turkmenistan President
Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov
and Afghan President Hamid
Karzai wer among the top leaders
who attended the summit.
Leaders and officials from the
four SCO observer countries of
Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India
were also present at the summit.
Leaders across the participating
nations held a broader discussion
over the issues like Afghanistan
crisis and the Iranian nuclear
programme. The member states of
the SCO adopted 10 agreements on
the concluding day of the summit.
The agreement includes the
Declaration on Building a Region
with Lasting Peace and Common
Prosperity, the Strategic Plan for the
Medium-Term Development of the
SCO, and the SCO Regulations on
Political and Diplomatic Measures
and Mechanism of Response to
Events Jeopardizing Regional
Peace, Security and Stability. The
SCO also decided to grant
Afghanistan observer status and
accept Turkey as a dialogue
partner.
Chinese President Hu Jintao
offered a 10 billion U.S. dollars loan
to the SCO which will be used be
used to promote the development
of SCO members. The SCO, an
intergovernmental mutual security
organization, was founded in
Shanghai on 15 June 2001. The
group has six full time members at
present namely China,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The
Central Asian nation Kyrgyzstan
will host the 2013 summit of SCO.
BOEING MD83 AIRCRAFT CRASHED
IN NIGERIA
A boeing MD83 aircraft
crashed in Lagos, the largest
Nigerian city on 3 June 2012. All
153 people on board were killed in
the worst air disaster of Nigeria in
nearly past two decades. The flight
was traveling from Nigerias
central capital of Abuja to Lagos in
the nations southwest. Scores
others were killed and injured on
the ground where the plane was
crashed.
President Goodluck Jonathan
later declared three days of national
mourning in Nigeria. The recent
crash is the worst for Nigeria since
September 1992, when a military
transport plane crashed shortly
after takeoff from Lagos, killing
nearly 163 army soldiers, relatives
and crew members on board.
Nigeria, home to more than
160 million people, is Africas most
populous nation. The oil-rich
nation has long been struggling
with widespread state-sponsored
corruption and malpractices.
Barring past twenty years, the
nation has time and again suffered
from horrible aviation disasters. In
August 2010, the U.S. had given
Nigeria the Federal Aviation
Administrations Category 1
status, its top safety rating, which
permits the Nigerians airliners to
have a direct flight to the U.S.
CHI NA AND BHUTAN MET TO
ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC TIES
Chinese Premier of the State
Council of the Peoples Republic of
China, Wen Jiabao and his
Bhutanese counterpart Jigmi Y
Thinley had a meet at Rio de Janeiro
on 21 June 2012. The talks were on
the sidelines of the Rio plus twenty
summit. Both the parties expressed
desire to establish diplomatic
relations between each other.
The meeting between both the
Prime Ministers was for the first
time. Bhutan has had a strained
relation with China sourced in a
boundary feud over which both the
countries have held nineteen
round of talks in the past. Though
neighbours for a while, both the
countries have not yet established
diplomatic relations as Bhutan, a
strongly ally of India, remained
aloof after China took control of
Tibet, which formed borders with
Bhutan.
INDIAN CONNECTION
Apparently, any settlement in
the Bhutan-China border talk is
significant to India. Chumbi Valley,
a vital tri-junction between all three
countries is almost five hundred
km away from the Siliguri Corridor
and connects India to the North
East states and Nepal to Bhutan.
The Valley is of geo-strategic
importance to China as it shares its
borders with Sikkim and Tibet.
Ideally, the development
should have been a cause of
concern for India, as Bhutan is
Indias closest ally, but the
development had come with
Indias knowledge and approval.
It is imperative to understand that
India plays a pivotal role in alliance
to Bhutan as they share diplomatic
ties themselves, however India has
nodded in affirmation and has not
shown any issue for Bhutan and
Chinas diplomatic ties.
BACKGROUND
Both China and Bhutan share
a four seventy kilometers long
border. In the past, both the
countries have held several rounds
of dialogue to resolve their border
dispute. The first agreement was
signed in the year 1998 and the last
round of border talks were held in
Thimphu in January 2010.
THE STRATEGI C PARTNERSHI P
AGREEMENT BETWEEN AFGHANISTAN
AND NORWAY
Afghanistan and Norway on
27 June 2012 finalized the draft of
the strategic partnership
agreement between the two
countries. The two countries will
sign the draft in September 2012.
Norwegian forces are posted in
Faryab province of northern
Afghanistan.
The strategic partnership
agreement provides the long-term
framework for the relationship
between Afghanistan and the
Norway after the withdrawal of
forces. Afghanistan has already
signed strategic partnership
agreements with the US, Britain,
India, Germany, France and Italy.
AL-QAIDAS SECOND-IN-COMMAND
ABU YAHYA AL-LIBI KILLED
A US drone strike in northwest
Pakistan killed al-Qaidas second-
in-command Abu Yahya al-Libi on
5 June 2012. The killing of al-Libi is
the most significant victory for the
US forces since the death of Osama
bin Laden.
The Libyan-born al-Libi was
considered charismatic leader with
religious credentials who was
helping preside over the
transformation of a secretive group
based in Pakistan and Afghanistan
into a global movement. Earlier the
US had captured al-Libi a decade
ago but he managed to flee from the
US captivity in 2005 in an
embarrassing security breach. He
was a regular in Al Qaeda videos
in which he talked about the
lessons he learned while watching
his captors, whom he described as
cowardly, lost and alienated. Al-
Libi was promoted to al-Qaidas
No. 2 spot after Ayman al-Zawahri
replaced bin Laden as al-Qaidas
topmost leader. As al-Qaidas no.
2, he was responsible for running
the groups day-to-day operations
in Pakistans tribal areas and
managed outreach to al-Qaidas
regional affiliates. He was
influential and popular within al-
Qaida given his scholarly
credentials, street cred from having
escaped from Bagram, charisma
and his easygoing, tribal speaking
style.
EMERGENCY DECLARED IN WEST
MYANMAR
Myanmar President Thein
Sein declared emergency in West
Myanmar on 10 June 2012. The
governments move came following
a wave of sectarian violence
between the Buddhists and
Muslims in the past week which
left seven people dead and
hundreds of properties ravaged in
Rakhine state of west Myanmar.
Conflict in troubled Rakhine state
blazed after a Buddhist woman
was killed in May 2012, followed
by an attack on a bus carrying
Muslims. The clashes began on 4
June 2012 when a violent mob
attacked a bus in Taungup, Rakhine
province, apparently mistakenly
believing some of the passengers
were responsible for the earlier rape
and murder of a Buddhist woman.
Rakhine state is named after
the ethnic Rakhine Buddhist
community, which is in the
majority in the state. The state also
has a sizeable Muslim population,
including the Rohingya minority.
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic
group and are considered to be the
refugees who have illegally
entered Myanmar from
neighboring Bangladesh.
The state emergency
imposed in the western state
can upset the countrys
initiatives taken in the
direction of democracy. The
former military ruled
country has been trudging
the path of
pol i t i c a l
r e f o r ms
over the
past two
years.
T h e
process of
pol i t i c a l
r e f o r ms
a c c e l e r -
ated in
Myanmar
after Thein Seins Union Solidarity
and Development Party stormed to
the power in March 2011after its
massive victory in the election held
in the country after 20 years.
Despite largely being controlled by
the military, the Thein Seins
government showcased enough
willingness to introduce real
political reforms in the country. In
a reconciliatory move the
government had released
hundreds of prisoners from the jail
in January 2012. The move was
followed by a by-elections in the
state in April 2012, which
witnessed pro democracy leader
Aung San Suu Kyis party NLD for
the first time since 1990 capturing
43 out of 45 seats.
India and the World
INDIA AND CHINA
India and China on 21 June
2012 agreed to increase their
defence and security dialogue and
work to take steps to ensure that
the two countries achieve a 100
billion dollars trade target by 2015.
The decision was taken on the
sidelines of the Ri0+ 20 summit at
Rio De Janeiro.India also raised the
border issue during the talks. India
and China agreed that they would
continue political dialogue at the
political level. India and China
also decided that the special
representatives would work for
preparing the joint record of their
work so far, which was already
announced in January 2012 and
give directions for the future co-
ordination between the two
countries. The special
representatives of India and China
would submit a report on the
developments so far by January
2013. India would setup inter-
ministerial group on its side while
China would have an official team
that would periodically exchange
views on maritime issues relating
to trade and security.
INDIA AND USA
US defense secretary Leon
Panetta arrived India on a two-day
visit on 5 June 2012. The visit was
aimed at
s t r engt heni ng
bilateral strategic
and defense
c o o p e r a t i o n
between the two
nations. US
specified the
Indian role in the
world politics and
its significance as
a link between
East and West
Asia and how the United States
views India as a net provider of
security from the Indian Ocean to
Afghanistan and beyond. Panetta
visited India as the part of his week-
long visit to Asia to formulate a new
US defense strategy to allies and
partners in the region. The strategy,
which was released in January
2012, calls for a shift in US strategic
focus to the Asia-Pacific. India over
the past one decade has emerged
as the key US ally in the Asian
continent. As the time for the
withdrawal of US troops from
Afghanistan is nearing, America
seeks to establish a stronger
strategic and defense tie with India,
so that it could keep a tab on the
regions geopolitics even after the
withdrawal of its troops. The
growing Chinese hegemony in the
region has also prompted the two
distant nations to come together in
order to tackle any possible threat
from the communist China. Many
analysts believe that the Panettas
visit is the part of Pentagons policy
to team up with India against the
growing Chinese assertiveness in
the global politics. But many
foreign policy experts are of the
contrary view as they felt that India
has always opted for a policy of
non-alignment and this time too
India will not compromise with the
fundamental principles of its
foreign policy.
There may be some starkly
differing voices among the experts
over the Indias future course, but
one thing that remains very clear
that Indias interest lie with both
China and US and given the
present circumstances in the world
politics it can not risk its
relationship with any of them.
Hence, It will be wise for India to
pursue a neutral and non-
confrontational outlook with
respect to both the super powers.
INDIA AND US
In what came as a major
disappointment for the Bhopal gas
tragedy victims, a US Federal Court
on 27 June 2012 absolved Union
Carbide Corporation and its former
chairman Warren Anderson of the
Bhopal gas tragedy case. In his
ruling US district Court Judge John
F. Keenan concluded that UCC is
neither directly nor as an
agent of Union
Carbide
I n d i a
Limited
( UCI L)
liable for
t h e
mi s h a p .
W h i l e
pronouncing
its verdict the
court invoked a 1 9 9 8
court verdict in a case involving
KFC, in which the court had
observed that legally the mere
assertion that a corporate parent is
or was involved in the decision-
making process of its subsidiary, or
that it controlled the legitimate
policies of its subsidiary, will not
shift liabilities among distinct
corporate entities.
Nearly 25000 people had lost
their life in Bhopal Gas Tragedy, one
of the worst industrial disasters of
the world history. The disaster
occured following the leakage of
poisonous methyl isocyanate gas
from Union Carbide India Limiteds
pesticides factory in Bhopal on 2-3
December 1984. The catastrophic
gas leak, immediately claimed the
life of 3000 people, while the
aftermath of the disaster had
proved to be far more horrifying as
thousands of people died
subsequently due to ill-effects of the
toxic waste in the environment. The
enormity of the damage can well
be assessed by the fact that even
today, after 27 years of the
incident, the
people of
Bhopal are
facing the
wrath of the
tragedy.
In a
testimony
to the
l o n g
l a s t i n g
catastrophic impact of
the gas leak, a test conducted by the
BBC in 2009 found that the water
of the affected region contain 1000
times the World Health
Organizations recommended
maximum amount of carbon
tetrachloride, a carcinogenic toxin.
The US court verdict, came in the
favor of UCC, has substantiated its
long held stance over the Bhopal
gas tragedy. The company has long
been in denial of all the charges
made against it by the victims of
the tragedy.
INDIA AND ISRAEL
India and Israel inked a
memorandum of understanding
(MoU) to expand the bilateral
relation in the tourism sector on 24
June 2012. Israel, under the MoU,
will open a tourism office in
Mumbai and increase the
frequency of flights to India. The
MoU was signed between Israeli
Tourism Minister Stas
Misezhnikov and his Indian
counterpart Minister Subodh Kant
Sahai in Jerusalam in Israel. Israel
is also set to invest 660000 dollar
to draw more Indian tourists to the
country. The MoU also set the
foundation to establish a tourism
development forum, which will
seek the advice from various
stakeholders including travel
agents, hoteliers, tour operators
and from the media, to expand
tourism market in both the
countries. The two countries have
a great scope of tourism
development by engaging into
mutual cooperation as nearly
40000 Indian tourists visit Israel
every year, and the same number of
Israeli citizens come to India
annually.
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
The Defence Secretary level
talks between Pakistan and India
and on Siachen were held at the
Ministry of Defence, Rawalpindi
on 11 12 June 2012. The talks were
held in a cordial and friendly
atmosphere. The conclusion of the
talks was that both nations
reaffirmed their resolve to make
serious, sustained and result
oriented efforts for seeking an
amicable resolution of Siachen. It
was agreed to continue dialogue on
Siachen. Both countries
acknowledged that the ceasefire
was holding since 2003. It was
agreed that the next round of talks
on Siachen will be held in New
Delhi on mutually convenient
dates, to be fixed through
diplomatic channels. Both India
and Pakistan want to demilitarize
Siachen, the worlds highest
battlefield. However, they have
differences over the modalities.
India wants the Actual Ground
Position Line to be authenticated
before withdrawal of troops from
Siachen while Pakistan wants
demilitarization first.
India on 8 June 2012
announced to allow foreign direct
investment from Pakistan. The
move is aimed at strengthening the
bilateral economic relations
between the two countries. The
decision will also facilitate the
economic integration in the South
A s i a n
region. The
U n i o n
F i n a n c e
Mi n i s t r y
h a d
received a
proposal by
t h e
Department
of Industrial
Policy and
Promotion (DIPP) seeking changes
in Foreign Exchange Management
Act (FEMA) to allow FDI from
Pakistan. Under the present FDI
policy, a Pakistani citizen or an
entity incorporated in there is not
allowed to invest in India. The
Government had earlier allowed
investments from Bangladesh
under the FIPB route. The bilateral
trade between India and Pakistan
for the year 2010-11 stood at 2.7
billion dollar. With 2.32 billion
dollar exports, India dominated the
trade, which grew at a rate of 47
per cent and also approaching
forward to occupy 1 per cent share
of Indian global exports.
A nine-member Pakistani
delegation has arrived in India to
learn from its experience of polio
eradication. Pakistan saw a
manifold rise in polio cases this
year, and is one of the three
countries, along with Afghanistan
and Nigeria, where the infectious
viral disease is still prevalent. India
became polio-free in January this
year, after one full year without a
single case being reported. It has
subsequently been removed from
the WHO list of polio-endemic
countries. Led by Shahnaz Wazir
Ali, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza
Gilanis special assistant on polio,
the Pakistan team will call on
officials of the Union Health
Ministry here on Thursday.
The delegation, comprising
health officials of districts along
the Indian border, will also visit a
polio camp. Altaf Bosan, National
Coordinator of the Prime Minister
on Polio, will accompany the team.
Meanwhile, the World Health
Organisation, in a resolution, has
impressed on member-states with
polio virus transmission to declare
it a national public health
emergency, making polio virus
eradication a national priority
programme, requiring the
development and full
implementation of emergency
action plans, to be updated every
six months, till such time the virus
transmission has been interrupted.
The resolution declares
completion of polio virus
eradication a programmatic
emergency for global public health,
requiring full implementation of
the existing and new eradication
strategies, the institution of strong
national oversight, and
accountability mechanisms for all
areas affected with the virus. The
members have been asked to
eliminate unimmunised areas and
maintain very high population
immunity against polio viruses
through routine immunisation.
Where necessary, they should
supplement immunisation
activities, maintain vigil for polio
virus importation and emergence
of circulating vaccine-derived polio
viruses, and to make available
urgently the financial resources
required for the full and continued
implementation, till 2013, of the
strategic approaches to interrupt
polio virus transmission globally,
and to initiate planning for
financing to the end of 2018 the
polio endgame strategy.
More importantly, the
resolution asks the WH Director-
General to undertake the
development, scientific vetting and
rapid finalisation of a
comprehensive eradication and
endgame strategy, and inform the
member-states of the potential
timing of a switch from the trivalent
to bivalent oral polio virus vaccine
for all routine immunisation
programmes, and to coordinate
with all partners including
manufacturers to promote research,
production and supply of vaccines
to enhance their affordability,
effectiveness and accessibility.
INDIA AND DUBAI
India emerged as the largest
trading partner of Dubai in the first
quarter of 2012-13. The latest data
of Dubai foreign trade released by
the Dubai Customs in the third
week of June 2012, shows the trade
volume in the first quarter between
India and Dubai to be worth 13
billion US Dollars. India was the
number one exporting country with
a volume worth 7 billion dollars.
In terms of imports, India came
second at 6 billion dollars after
China. Dubais oil foreign trade
registered a significant growth of
6.6 per cent in the first quarter of
2012-2013, which reflects the
resilience and diversity of the
economy. Gold was the number one
product to be exported from Dubai
in the first quarter of 2012-13.
INDIA AND BAHRAIN
India and Bahrain, on 31 May
2012 inked a Tax Information
Exchange Agreement to promote
economic cooperation and joint
investment between the two
countries. The agreement is aimed
at increasing bilateral trade that
stands at 1.7 billion dollar. The
agreement with its provision for
effective exchange of information
between the two countries, will
help in reducing tax evasion and
tax avoidance. The agreement was
signed by Indian Minister of State
for Finance Namo Narain Meena
and Bahrains Minister of
Transportation and Acting Chief
Executive of Economic
Development Board Kamal Ahmed
in New Delhi. The Bahrain
delegation was led by Prince
Salman Bin HamadAl-Khalifa, the
Crown Prince of Bahrain and
chairman of the Bahrain Economic
Development Board. The two
countries also inked a
Memorandum of Understanding
(MoU) to make the ties on
technological front more effective.
Under the newly signed MoU India
will provide technical assistance to
Bahrain and help it to develop its
own IT sector in Bahrain. Besides
Tax Information Exchange
Agreement, several other
commercial and economic
cooperation agreements were also
signed. A memorandum of
understanding (MoU) to develop
business and commercial was
signed between the industrial
bodies of two countries. The two
countries historically enjoy an
intimate and friendly relation with
each other. Indian Diaspora
constitutes nearly a quarter of
Bahrains entire 1.2 million
population.
NEW TELECOM POLI CY 2012
APPROVED
The Union cabinet in a
meeting presided over by the Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh
approved a new telecom policy
2012 which seeks to do away with
roaming charges across the
country. The new
policy called National
Telecom Policy-2012
will replace more than
a decade old
legislation. The new
Telecom Policy also
simplifies the licencing
policy. The new policy
also seeks to provide a
predictable and stable
policy regime for a
period of nearly 10
years. The policy aims
at providing secure,
reliable, affordable and
high quality converged
telecommunication services
anytime, anywhere for an
accelerated inclusive socio-
economic development. The policy
emphasized on the multiplier effect
and transformational impact of
such services on the overall
economy. Detailed guidelines, as
may be considered appropriate are
to be introduced from t from time to
time for operational purposes.
National Telecom Policy is
expected to enable smooth
implementation of the policies for
providing an efficient
telecommunication infrastructure
taking into account the
primary objective of
maximising public good
by empowering the
people of India. Also the
policy will enable taking
of facilitatory measures
to encourage existing
service providers to
rapidly migrate to the
new regime in a
uniformly liberalised
environment with a level
playing field. New
Telecom Policy-2012
Highlights
Economy
Increase rural teledensity from
the current level of around 39
to 70 by the year 2017 and 100
by the year 2020
Repositioning of Mobile
phone as an instrument of
empowerment
Broadband -Broadband for
All at a minimum download
speed of 2 Mbps
Domestic Manufacturing -
Making India a global hub
The policy also provides for
national number portability
However in this respect too no
timeline was provided. The New
Telecom Policy also mentioned that
cloud computing, next generation
networks, IPV6 and Voice over
Internet Protocol (VoIP) to be thrust.
The union cabinet also approved
introduction of unified licence and
authorised the Department of
Telecommunications to finalise the
new unified licensing regime with
the approval of minister of
communications and IT.
NEW TRADE POLICY TO BOOST
INDIAS EXPORT
India on 5 June 2012 announced
a new trade policyaimed at
achieving 20 per cent increase in
exports to 360 billion dollar in the
fiscal year 2012-13. Indias exports
grew by 21 per cent and touched
303.7 billion dollar in 2011-12,
while the trade deficit during the
same period expanded to 185
billion dollar. The government also
announced to come out with new
guidelines to restore Special
Economic Zones (SEZ) and Export
Oriented Unit (EOU) schemes to
further boost the shipments.
As the part of the new trade
policy, the Union Commerce
Ministry had added seven new
markets to the focus market scheme
(FMS) and an equal number of new
markets to the special FMS.
Countries like Algeria, Aruba,
Austria, Cambodia, Myanmar, the
Netherland Antilles and Ukraine
have been added to FMS; while
countries including Belize, Chile,
El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras, Morocco and Uruguay
have been added to special FMS.
The FMS and SFMS scheme will
help India to explore new markets
and promote the product
diversification. The highlights of
the new trade policy are as follows:
Government set the export
target for 2012-13 at 20 per cent
2 per cent interest subsidy
scheme extended till March
2013
Government to announce new
guidelines to promote SEZs
Incentives for exports from
north-eastern states
Shipments from Delhi,
Mumbai through post, courier
or e-commerce to get export
benefits
Foreign Trade Policy
document to be more user
friendly
13 shows abroad to promote
Brand India
Single revolving bank
guarantee for different export
deals
Seven new markets added to
Focus Market Scheme
Market linked focus product
scheme extended till
March13 for apparel export
to USA and EU
GAS ALLOCATION OF DMICDC
DISCARDED
The Petroleum and Natural
Gas Ministry on 25 June 2012
discarded Gas allocation of Delhi-
Mumbai Industrial Corridor
Development Corporation
(DMICDC). The gas allocation was
of 8 million metric standard cubic
metres per day (mmscmd) gas from
two of DMICDC power projects, to
provide gas at reasonable rate. The
request was neglected because as
per Petroleum Ministry there is
additional demand of fertilizer
about 22 mmscmd and any
allocation of gas to DMICDC
projects was not possible. Delhi-
Mumbai Industrial Corridor
Development Corporation
(DMICDC) is a mega infra-structure
project of 90 billion dollar. It has
the financial & technical help of
Japan. It is covering the length of
1483km between Delhi and
Mumbai. DMICDC strains on
expanding the manufacturing and
services base and to develop DMIC
as the Global Manufacturing and
Trading Hub.
NOMURA SLASHED INDIAS GDP
PROJECTION
Nomura, the global financial
services firm, on 26 June 2012
slashed the countrys growth
forecast for the fiscal year 2012-13
to 5.8 per cent, from 6.7 per cent
earlier. Nomura also cut down
Indias GDP forecast for 2013-14 to
6.6 per cent from the earlier 6.9 per
cent. The
government in its
b u d g e t a r y
projection of GDP
growth, estimated
the growth rate to
be around 7.6 per
cent in the fiscal
year 2012-13.
Indias economic
growth rate
slipped to 6.5 per cent in 2011-12,
while it had registered 8.4 per cent
growth in the previous two
financial years. The global
financial services firm also hiked
fiscal deficit forecast for India to 5.8
per cent of GDP in the current fiscal
from 5.2 per cent. Government in
its budget projections aimed fiscal
deficit to bring down to 5.1 per cent
in 2012-13 from 5.76 per cent in the
previous fiscal.
SEBI NOTIFIED NORMS FOR LISTING
OF STOCK EXCHANGE
Capital markets regulator
Securities and Exchange Board of
India (SEBI) on 21 June 2012
notified new rules for ownership
and governance of stock exchanges
to encourage the setting up of new
bourses and enable
exchanges to get listed.
The amendments were
announced following
the legal tussle between
the regulator and MCX
Stock Exchange, which
had earlier sought
approval to start an
equity platform. The
new norms require the
recognised stock exchange to have
a minimum net worth of Rs 100
crore at all times and at least 51 per
cent of stake has to be held by
public. The ownership of a single
investor was capped at 5% with an
exemption for stock exchanges,
depositories, insurance and
banking companies and public
financial institutions, which has
been permitted to hold up to 15 per
cent. The shareholders who hold
stake in excess of the new limits
would have to comply with new
norms within a period to be decided
by SEBI and such period could be
of up to three years.
SEBI also specified that direct
and indirect exposure to any stock
exchange will be considered while
calculating the prescribed
shareholding limit. The new rules
permits stock exchanges to list on
any recognised stock exchange
other than itself and its associated
stock exchanges, within three
years of commencing operations. It
was highlighted that for a stock
exchange that is not listed, an FII
may acquire shares through
transactions outside of a
recognised stock exchange
provided it is not an initial
allotment of shares. For listed
bourses, the FIIs can transact
through the exchange where the
shares are listed. The market
regulator had earlier in April 2012
approved changes to the Manner
of Increasing and Maintaining
Public Shareholding (MIMPS) in
recognised stock exchanges at a
board meeting.
SEBI is currently in the process
of formulating minimum listing
standards for listing of companies
on stock exchanges. A Conflicts
Resolution Committee or CRC will
be formed by SEBI with a majority
of external and independent
members to deal with all issues
concerning conflicts of interest with
respect to listing of companies. The
CRC will first consider matters of
policy and guidelines involving
conflict issues and then
recommend standards relevant to
the areas of potential conflict in
exchanges. With respect to listing
the market regulator mentioned
that a recognised stock exchange
may apply for listing of its
securities on any bourse other than
itself and its associated stock
exchange, provided they comply
with the new regulations of
ownership and governance and
also has completed three years of
continuous trading operations and
has got SEBIs approval.
The shares of a recognised
stock exchange and a recognised
clearing corporation is required to
be in demat form, while clearing
corporation cannot hold any right,
stake or interest in an exchange.
THE RUPEE PLUNGED TO A RECORD
LOW OF 56.90
Indian Rupee plunged to an
all time low of 56.90 rupees against
the US dollar on 22 June 2012 on
global risk aversion and demand
for dollar. Indias slipping
domestic growth, declining
industrial output figure, RBIs
stringent monetary policy stance,
persistent high rate of inflation and
credit rating downgrade by
international rating agencies like
Fitch and Standard and Poors
have prompted the worsening of
Indian rupee against the dollar.
Given the current economic and
political situation of the country,
rupee may fall further at 57-58
levels in June 2012. Rupee, given
its current trading status, is proving
to be Asias worst performing
currency. The currency has also
been the poorest performer among
the all Asian currencies this week,
on a 5-day basis. So far the Indian
currency had tumbled 6.7 per cent
in the year 2012.
INDIAN ECONOMY TO GROW BY 6.9
PER CENT
The World Bank in its report
named Global Economic
Prospects released on 12 June 2012,
projected Indian economy to grow
by 6.9% in the financial year 2012-
13. The World Bank report
predicted Indias growth
increasing to 6.9 per cent, 7.2 per
cent and 7.4 per cent in fiscal years
2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15,
respectively. Blaming fragile
monetary policy, long paused
reforms, persistent inflation and
widening fiscal deficit for the
countrys poor growth in 2011, the
multi-lateral agency advised India
to take some corrective measures to
improve the sinking growth. Indian
economy grew by 6.5 per cent in
2011-12, the lowest in the past nine
years. The economy had registered
an impressive 8.4 per cent growth
in the previous two years. The
Indian government had projected
the economy to grow at 7.6 per cent
in the fiscal year 2012-13, but given
the prevailing economic and
political situations in the country,
the projected growth rate could be
hard to achieve. The World Bank
report estimated the global
economy to expand 2.5% in the
fiscal year 2012-13. The multi-
lateral agency also cautioned the
developing nations of the bumpy
ride ahead.
US HEALTH CARE LAW HELD
CONSTITUTIONAL
The US Supreme Court on 28
June 2012, upheld the US President
Barack Obamas most ambitious
social legislation, the Health Care
Law (The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act). The court
verdict came in the favor of
legislation, made it mandatory for
all American citizens to have
health insurance or pay a penalty.
The health care legislation mainly
aims at covering more than 30
million Americans who have not
been insured. The 9-judge US Apex
Court bench headed by Chief
Justice John Robert held the ruling
as constitutional in a 5-4 ruling.
Chief Justice John Roberts vote
proved to be crucial while deciding
the fate of the bill. With the Supreme
Court ruling came in the favor of
legislation, the country is set to join
the league of developed nations
which provide mandatory health
care assurance to all its citizens.
US President Barack Obama
signed the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law
in March 2010. The legislation
faced severe protest as
Republicans, the National
Federation of Independent
Businesses and several individuals
came in the opposition of it and
pushed the demand to repeal the
law. Nearly 25 states came forward
opposing the bill as they argued
that the health care legislation
would add to the national debt,
and proved to job-killer.
MOODYS STABLE CREDIT RATING
OUTLOOK FOR INDIA
In a big respite to the troubled
Indian economy, Moodys
Investors Service, the leading credit
ratings provider, on 25 June 2012
reinstated the stable credit rating
outlook for India. The Moodys
decision mirrors its view that the
prevailing economic slowdown in
India is not going to last longer and
the country will soon come out of
the gloomy economic state.
Moodys in its latest report
named Frequently asked questions
about Indias sovereign
rating pointed out that Indias Baa3
rating already comprises
challenges including a weak fiscal
performance of the government,
high inflation and an uncertain
investment policy environment,
which have characterized the
economy for decades.
The other credit rating
agencies Standard & Poors and
Fitch had earlier revised Indias
credit outlook to negative in their
separate report on countrys
sovereign credit rating. The
Standard & Poors move came on
24 April 2012, followed by Fitch
which had downgraded Indias
rating to negative on 18 June 2012.
In its latest report the Standard &
Poors had threatened to put India
into the junk (speculative) category
from investment category.
What does Sovereign rating Baa
means?
Sovereign rating Baa are
judged to be medium-grade rating
and subject to moderate credit risk
and possess certain speculative
characteristics.
INDIAS FDI SLIPPED 41% IN APRIL
2012
According to the latest data
released by the Reserve Bank of
India (RBI) on 19 June 2012, the
foreign direct investment (FDI)
inflows in India dipped nearly 8
per cent to 7.8 billion dollar during
January-April 2012. In the month
of April 2012, India registered a
decline of 41 per cent to 1.85 billion
dollar in its FDI inflow. The country
had attracted FDI worth 3.12
billion dollar in April, 2011. The
decline in FDI was largely
attributed to policy paralysis on the
side of government which
apparently stalled several policy
reforms in the country. Legislations
like retrospective tax laws and
persistent inflation only added to
the anxiety of global investors, who
once considered India as a country
with immense economic
possibilities.
Services sector with a total of
449 million dollar inflow topped
the list of sectors which received
the maximum FDI inflow in April
2012.The sector was followed by
pharmaceuticals sector at 359
million dollar FDI, construction
sector at 120 million dollar FDI and
power sector at 68 million dollar
FDI.
The country received the
highest-ever monthly FDI inflow of
8.1 billion dollar in March 2012.
Earlier, the highest figure was 5.65
billion dollar which came in June
2011. Entire FDI inflows for the
fiscal 2011-12 clocked 36.50 billion
dollar. In the fiscal year 2010-11 the
country had registered 19.42 billion
dollar FDI, down from 25.83 billion
dollar in 2009-10. In a move that
signifies investors eroding
confidence in India, the
international credit rating agencies
Standard and Poors and Fitch
lowered Indias credit outlook to
negative from stable.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FDI & FII
FDI and FII both the terms are
related to investment in a foreign
country. FDI is an investment that
a company makes in a foreign
country while, FII is an investment
made by an investor in the stock
markets of a foreign nation.
In FII, the companies only
need to get registered in the stock
exchange to make investments
while, in FDI the investors make
investment in a foreign nation.
BIHAR TOPPED IN GSDP
According to data released by
Ministry of Statistics of India on 1
June 2012, Bihar emerged as the
state with highest economic growth
rate in the country. The state which
until recently was synonymous
with poverty, recorded an
impressive 13.1 per cent growth in
2011-12. Bihar topped the list for
second consecutive year. The states
economy even surpassed the
Punjab on the back of four years of
double-digit growth. The state was
closely followed by Delhi and
Puducherry. Chhattisgadh and
Goa were the other two states in the
list of top five states. Tamil Nadu
and Gujarat, the two highly
industrialized states registered the
growth of 9.4 per cent and 9.1 per
cent respectively in the fiscal year
2011-12.
Punjab, leading food grain
producing state of India, Andhra
Pradesh and Karnataka, both the
heart of the IT sector of the country,
and Uttar Pradesh, the countrys
most populous state, registered
growth of 6.5% in 2011-12, lower
than Indias GDP growth. With the
Bihar government taking
numerous measures to attract
investment in the state, the result is
quite visible with the growth
number rising on constant basis.
An improved law and order
situation and developing
infrastructure in the state are
apparently boosting the investment
sentiments of the industrial houses
in the country which are now
coming ahead with proposals to set
up factory in the state. Agricultural
productivity has also taken a
quantum jump in the state
apparently contributing to the
overall growth of the state. A slew
of development measures have also
been put into place by the
government to ensure enhanced
education and medical facilities in
the state.
INDIAS FISCAL DEFICIT FOR APRIL-
MAY PERIOD STOOD AT 1.41 LAKH
CRORE RUPEES
As per the latest data released
by the Controller General of
Accounts (CGA), Indias fiscal
deficit during the April-May, the
first two months of the fiscal year
2012-13 stood at 1.41 lakh crore
rupees, 27 per cent of the budget
estimates. The increased fiscal
deficit figure came despite revenue
receipt witnessing a substantial
hike and stood at 47897 crore
rupees, which was 5.1 per cent of
the budget estimates. Total
expenditure of the government in
the first two months of fiscal year
2012-13 was 1.90 lakh crore rupees,
or 12.8 per cent of the budget
estimates. For the fiscal year 2012-
13, the government has pegged the
fiscal deficit target at 5.13 lakh crore
rupees, or 5.1 per cent of GDP. In
the corresponding period during
the last fiscal year, the fiscal deficit
was 32 per cent of the budget
estimate amounting 1.3 lakh crore
rupees.
E-VOTING MADE MANDATORY BY
SEBI FOR TOP 500 LI STED
COMPANIES OF BSE & NSE
The capital market regulator
Securities and Exchange Board of
India (SEBI) on 26 June 2012 made
it mandatory for top 500 listed
companies to hold e-voting with an
objective to widen shareholder
participation in key decisions.
SEBIs decision on e-voting is to be
implemented in a phased manner.
The implementation will begin by
subjecting the top 500 listed
companies at the Bombay Stock
Exchange and the National Stock
Exchange based on market
capitalization to e-voting. The
structural changes like scrutiny of
audit reports as well as e-voting are
expected to benefit the capital
market in the medium term.
SEBI also decided to create a
Qualified Audit Report review
Committee (QARC) represented by
accounting regulator ICAI (Institute
of Chartered Accountants of India)
and stock exchanges. The
committee would be responsible for
processing qualified annual audit
reports filed by the listed entities
with stock exchanges. The
committee will be expected to study
reports where accounting
irregularities have been pointed out
by Financial Reporting Review
Board of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants of India (ICAI-FRRB).
The regulator relaxed norms
for Offer For Sale (OFS). OFS is a
new route introduced by SEBI in
early 2012 to help companies
increase their public shareholding.
A minimum gap of two weeks
between two OFS issuances was
permitted by SEBI.
SEBI made it easier for
promoters of listed companies to
dilute their stake and comply with
public holding rules by 2013.As
specified by SEBI, private sector
companies and also the state-
owned corporations is required to
have a minimum public holding of
25% by August 2013.
In the SEBI board meeting, the
regulator also announced a simpler
share auction mechanism that
would help listed companies to
attract investors. It provided
institutional investors with the
option of applying for shares either
with 100% margin or with a lesser
margin to be fixed by stock
exchanges. However in case of the
lesser margin being fixed by the
stock exchange the bids cannot be
changed.
With regards to fulfilling
public holding norms, the board
decided that issuers will be
required to disclose the floor price
a day before the share auction. The
floor price may or may not be a part
of the notice given by companies
on the offer. Investors were barred
from modifying or cancelling bids
during the last 60 minutes from the
close of the bidding session in the
auction. Exchanges are required to
display the indicative price during
the last 60 minutes of the close of
bidding session irrespective of the
book being built.
RBI KEPT KEY POLICY RATES
UNCHANGED
The Reserve Bank of India in
its mid-quarterly monetary policy
review on 18 June 2012, decided to
keep the cash reserve ratio and the
policy repo rate unchanged at 4.75
per cent and 8.0 per cent
respectively. The reverse repo rate
remain unchanged at 7.0 per cent.
The marginal standing facility rate
and the Bank Rate is to stand at 9.0
per cent. Further reduction in the
policy rate at the time when the
inflation is still above the comfort
level of the people is likely to
aggravate the inflationary
pressures. The RBI while
announcing its monetary policy
opined that there are several other
factors other than policy rates,
which are affecting the growth and
investment activities in the country.
The slowing pace of the
economy (Indias March quarter
economic growth stood at 5.3 per
cent, lowest in past 9 years) and
weakening investment sentiments
had prompted industry leaders to
urge RBI to take a call on policy rate
cuts. International credit rating
agency Standard & Poor s had
warned that India could be the first
BRIC nation to lose its investment-
level credit rating due to its fragile
outlook of economy and frozen
policy reforms.
The RBI did not however pay
much heed to the industrys
concerns of sinking growth and
concentrated on taming the
unrelenting inflation. India
witnessed inflation figure rose to
7.55 percent in May 2012, which is
the highest among industrialised
countries and the BRIC group of
nations. The central bank had
earlier reduced the key policy rates
by 50 basis points in its quarterly
review of monetary policy on April
2012.
INDIAS EXPORTS REGISTERED A
GROWTH OF 3.2 %
According to data released by
the Commerce Ministry in New
Delhi on 1 June 2012 Indias
exports registered a growth of 3.2
per cent on year-on-year basis to
24.4 billion dollar in April 2012.
Exports figure in April 2011 stood
at 23.6 billion dollar. The slumping
export figures are largely attributed
to the slowing global demand of
goods. Imports during the same
period witnessed a growth of 3.8
per cent to 37.9 billion dollar,
creating a trade deficit of 13.4
billion dollar. In April 2012, the
countrys oil imports grew about 7
per cent to 13.9 billion dollar
compared to the same period in
2011. Non-oil imports expanded 2
per cent on year-on-year basis to 24
billion dollar during April the first
month of fiscal year 2012-13.
On an annual basis Indian
exports expanded 21 per cent to
303.7 billion dollar in the fiscal year
2011-12. The imports during the
same period grew 32.2 per cent to
488.6 billion dollar. The trade
deficit for the full fiscal year was
184.9 billion dollar. A higher trade
deficit will have an adverse impact
over already ailing Indian
economy. The broadening trade
deficit could worsen the current
account balance of the country and
further weaken the rupee.
RBI HIKED FOREIGN INVESTMENT
LIMIT IN GOVERNMENT BONDS BY 5
BILLION DOLLAR
In a move aimed at arresting
the unrelenting fall of Indian rupee,
Indias central bank the Reserve
Bank of India on 25 June 2012 hiked
the limit of foreign investment in
government bonds by 5 billion
dollar to 20 billion dollar. The bank
also raised limit of external
commercial borrowing (ECB) to 10
bilion dollar. Currently, foreign
institutional investors (FIIs) are
allowed to invest upto 20 billion
dollar in Indian corporate bonds.
While the limit in government
bonds is at 15 billion dollar, FIIs are
barred to invest in infrastructure
bonds upto 25 billion dollar. The
central bank also cut down the time
period for the maturity of
government securities (g-secs) to
three years from earlier five years.
What is ECB ?
External Commercial
Borrowings (ECB) refer to
commercial loans [in the form of
bank loans, buyers credit,
suppliers credit, securitised
instruments (e.g. floating rate notes
and fixed rate bonds)] availed from
non-resident lenders with
minimum average maturity of 3
years.
What are Government bonds or
Government securities?
Government bonds are the
bonds issued by the Government
of a country in its own currency.
The bond helps the government to
raise money which is used to
finance various activities like
building roads, hospitals,
infrastructure etc. Hence, the
government bonds are a kind of
loan against which the government
of a country receives a certain
amount of money, for a certain
amount of time, on a certain interest
rate.
FITCH RATING AGENCY REVISED
OUTLOOK ON INDIAS FINANCIAL
INSTITUTIONS TO NEGATIVE
Ratings agency Fitch on 20
June 2012 revised the outlook on
Indias financial institutions to
negative from stable. The outlook
of six government banks, two
private banks, two wholly owned
government institutions and one
infrastructure finance company
was lowered by the rating agency.
The financial entities which faced
the axe are as follows: Bank of
Baroda (BoB) and its overseas
subsidiary Bank of Baroda (New
Zealand), Canara Bank, IDBI Bank
and Axis Bank, Export-Import
Bank of India, Hudco, IDFC and
Indian Railway Finance
Corporation. The downward
revision in outlook is likely to result
in increased cost of fund from
overseas. Major public sector
lender, State Bank of India which
recently announced its plans to
raise $2 billion from overseas
markets will be hit the most by the
revision.
In the report by Fitch, the
rating agency listed high customer
deposit base, established domestic
franchises and adequate
capitalisation as the strengths of
banks. On the other hand it also
mentioned that non-banking
institutions are at greater risk
because they lack the funding
advantage. It also mentioned that
in case sovereign long-term IDR is
downgraded, banks with viability
rating (VR) of BBB- would also be
affected because of these linkages.
VR is designed to represent its view
as to the intrinsic creditworthiness
of an issuer.
The rating agency had earlier
on 18 June 2012 also revised Indias
sovereign outlook to negative.
Following the downward revision
of the sovereign outlook, outlook of
seven PSUs including NTPC, SAIL,
IOC, PFC, GAIL, REC and NHPC
was lowered to negative. The Fitch
action thus affected 19 Indian
entities in all. The rating agency
further opined that weakening
economic and fiscal outlook,
slowing business reforms as well
as inflationary pressures is likely
to further put pressure on the future
asset quality of the entities.
INDIAS EXPORTS DROPPED BY 4.16
PER CENT AT 25.68 BI LLI ON
DOLLAR IN MAY 2012
As per the export-import data
released by the Commerce Ministry
on 14 June 2012, Indias export
dropped by 4.16 per cent at 25.68
billion dollar in May 2012. The
falling exports figure was largely
attributed to slump in global
demand of goods and contracted
industrial growth in the country.
Imports also registered a decline of
7.36 per cent at 41.9 billion dollar.
The trade deficit figure also shrank
to 16.3 billion dollar during the
May 2012, from 18.5 billion dollar
in May 2011. On the export side
petroleum products, engineering
goods, gems and jewellery, and
readymade garments witnessed a
slump, while on the import front,
gold and silver was down by about
51 per cent, while plant and
machinery dropped by 8 per cent.
However, imports of crude oil were
up 14 per cent. Gloomy economic
outlook in the western countries,
particularly in eurozone
economies, which had been a
conventional market for Indian
goods, badly hurt the exports of the
country.
GROWTH RATE OF EIGHT CORE
INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRIES DIPPED
TO 2.2% IN APRIL 2012
As per the official data
released on 31 May 2012, the
growth rate of eight core
infrastructure industries dipped to
2.2 per cent in April 2012 from 4.2
per cent in April 2011. The eight
core sectors crude oil, petroleum
refinery products, coal, electricity,
cement and finished steel has a
weight of 37.9 per cent in the Index
of Industrial Production (IIP). The
dip in the growth of the core sector
industries was attributed to poor
performance by sectors such as
natural gas, crude oil and
fertilizers. The overall
infrastructure sector growth for
March 2012 was revised
downwards to 2.2 per cent as
compared to a healthier 6.5 per cent
expansion witnessed in the same
month last year. Also, the
cumulative growth of infrastructure
industries was found to have
slipped to 4.4 per cent, which is
significantly lower than the 6.6 per
cent increase seen in 2010-11.
As per the data released by the
CSO, natural gas and crude oil
output during April 2012 fell by
11.3 per cent and 1.3 per cent,
respectively. Petroleum refinery
products and fertiliser production
also witnessed negative growth
rates, contracting by 2.8 per cent
and 9.3 per cent in April 2012.
Slowdown in electricity generation
was also witnessed in April.
Electricity generation grew at a
lower pace of 4.6 per cent during
the month as compared to 6.4 per
cent in April 2011. However, three
sectors- coal, steel and cement were
noted to have fared better as
compared to 2011. While coal
production went up by 3.8 per cent
in April 2012 as compared to an
increase of 2.7 per cent witnessed
in April 2011, the output of
steel and cement grew by a
healthy 5.8 per cent and 8.6
per cent during April 2012 as
compared to negative growth
rates of (-) 2.9 per cent and (-
) 0.1 per cent witnessed by the
two sectors in the
corresponding period of
2011.
NASAS NUCLEAR SPECTROSCOPIC
TELESCOPE ARRAY LAUNCHED
National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA) on
13 May 2012 launched Nuclear
Spectroscopic Telescope
Array (NuSTAR) on a Pegasus
rocket. The jet was launched from
Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall
Islands. NuSTAR will help
scientists find the most subtle and
energetic black holes, which will
enable them to understand the
structure of the universe. The
project aims to study energetic
phenomena such as clusters of
galaxies, black holes and the
explosions of massive stars. It will
also study the Suns atmosphere for
hints on how it is heated. The
NuSTAR will work in coordination
with other telescopes in space,
including NASAs Chandra X-ray
Observatory, which observes
lower-energy X-rays. The project
will open a new avenue on the
universe and will
p r o v i d e
complementary
data to NASAs
larger missions
including Fermi,
C h a n d r a ,
Hubble and
Spitzer. The total
budget of the
project is
estimated to be
180 million dollar, including the
cost of development, the launch
vehicle and two years of in-orbit
operations. The entire project
including the telescope and
Pegasus launcher was developed
by Orbital Sciences Corp.
WHAT IS BLACK HOLE ?
A black hole is a place in space
where gravity pulls so much that
even light can not get out. The
gravity is so strong because matter
has been squeezed into a tiny
space. This can happen when a
star is dying.
HOW MOSQUITOES FLY IN RAIN
Even though a single raindrop
can weigh 50 times more than a
mosquito, the insect can still fly in
the rain. They found the mosquitos
strong exoskeleton and low mass
render it impervious to falling
Science and Technology
raindrops. The research team, led
by Assistant Professor of
Mechanical Engineering David Hu
and his doctoral student Andrew
Dickerson, found that mosquitoes
receive low impact forces from
raindrops because the mass of
mosquitoes causes raindrops to lose
little momentum upon impact. To
study how mosquitoes fly in the
rain, the research team constructed
a flight arena consisting of a small
acrylic cage covered with mesh to
contain the mosquitoes but permit
entry of water drops. They used a
water jet to simulate rain stream
velocity and observed six
mosquitoes flying into the stream.
All the mosquitoes survived the
collision.
The collision force must
equal the resistance applied by the
insect. Mosquitoes dont resist at
all, but simply go with the flow,
Hu said. The team also filmed free-
flying mosquitoes that were
subjected to rain drops. They found
that upon impact the mosquito is
adhered to the front of the drop for
up to 20 body lengths. To survive,
the mosquito must eventually
separate from the front of the drop.
The mosquito accomplishes this by
using its long legs and wings,
whose drag forces act to rotate the
mosquito off the point of contact.
This is necessary, otherwise the
mosquito will be thrown into the
ground at the speed of a falling
raindrop, Hu said. The results of
the research will appear in the latest
issue of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
GREEN RUST COULD SCRAPE
TOXIC METALS
A rare kind of mineral known
as green rust, which could be
used to scrape toxic metals and
radioactive species from the
environment, also played a similar
and crucial role early in Earths
history. Research suggests for the
first time that green rust was likely
widespread in ancient oceans and
may have played a vital role in the
creation of our early atmosphere.
Led by Newcastle University, the
study shows that during the
Precambrian period, green rust
scavenged heavy metals such as
nickel out of the water, the
journal Geology reports.
HIGHLY REACTIVE
Only discovered last decade,
green rust is a highly reactive iron
mineral which experts hope could
be used to clean up metal pollution
and even radioactive waste,
according to a Newcastle
statement. Newcastle Universitys
Simon Poulton, professor, said this
latest discovery proved the
effectiveness of green rust as an
environmental cleaner. Because it
is so reactive, green rust has hardly
ever been found before in nature
and never in a water system like
this, explains Poulton, who led the
research team involving experts
from the Universities of Newcastle,
Nancy, Southern Denmark, Leeds,
Brussels and Kansas, and the
Canadian Light Source and
Indonesian Institute of Sciences.
The discovery of green rust in Lake
Matano, Indonesia, where we
carried out our experiments shows
for the first time what a key role it
played in our ancient oceans
scavenging dissolved nickel, a key
micronutrient for
methanogenesis.
Sequoia is the Fastest
Computer in the World
Sequoia, the US super
computer, was crowned the fastest
computer in the world on 17 June
2012. Situated at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in
California, Sequoia is able to make
16.32 quadrillion calculations per
second (16.32 petaflops/s).
Developed by IBM, the
supercomputer belongs from IBMs
BlueGene family, which runs on
Power processors, chips that are
made at IBMs plant in East Fishkill.
The powerful Supercomputing
System Sequoia help the United
States keep its nuclear stockpile
safe, secure and effective without
the need for underground testing.
The U.S. is the top consumer
of high-performance systems. With
253 of 500 systems US holds the
highest share of worlds fastest
computers. Asia holds 121 systems,
with China (68 systems) and Japan
(34 systems) leading in that region.
Europe has 107 systems with the
U.K. (25), France (22) and Germany
(20) in a tight race.
Top 500 systems also appear
in scattered countries such as Israel,
Canada, United Arab Emirates and
Australia.
The top 10 Powerful
Supercomputers of the world:
1. Sequoia at Lawrence
Livermore National
Laboratory in California - US
2. K Computer at RIKEN
Advanced Institute for
Computational Science
campus in Kobe - Japan
3. Mira at Argonne National
Laboratory in Illinois - US
4. SuperMUC at Leibniz
Supercomputing Centre in
Garching - Germany
5. Tianhe-1A at National
Supercomputing Center in
Tianjin - China
6. Jaguar at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee - US
7. Fermi at CINECA in Bologna -
Italy
8. JuQueen at Forschungsz-
entrum Juelich in Julich -
Germany
9. Curie thin nodes at CEA/
TGCC-GENCI in Bruyeres-le-
Chatel - France
10. Nebulae at National
Supercomputing Centre in
Shenzhen - China
As per the June 2012 Top 500
Supercomputers list (it is
published twice in a year) two
supercomputers from India figured
in the top 100. The CSIR Centre for
Mathematical Modeling and
Computer Simulation (C-MMACS),
ranked 58, while SAGA-220,
developed by the Indian Space
Research Organisation (Isro) and
the IISc, ranked 86. Earlier in
November 2007, India had got nine
supercomputers in the Top 500 list.
Ekas, developed by the
Computational Research
Laboratories Ltd (CRL), a unit of
Tata Sons, the Hewlett-Packard
(HP) system was ranked the
worlds fourth-largest
supercomputer. The system cost
around 30 million dollar(around
165 crore rupees ) and was built in
just six weeks. It was the first time
that an Indian supercomputer
figured among the worlds top 10.
Though the system now ranks 129
in the top 500 list. PARAM 8000 is
broadly considered as Indias first
supercomputer. It was built by the
Centre for Development of
Advanced Computing (C-DAC)
with Russian collaboration. The
University of Mannheim, Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, and
the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville every year prepares the
list of TOP 500 supercomputers in
the world.
HUMAN ANCESTORS ORIGINATED IN
ASIA
The earliest ancestors of
modern human may have
originated in Asia and not Africa
as widely believed,
according to a new study
based on fossil discovery
in Myanmar. Previous
fossil finds have long
suggested that Africa was
the cradle for anthropoids,
which include monkeys,
apes and humans. Now,
an international team in
Myanmar has found the tooth of a
pre-human ancestor which may
prove that anthropoids originated
in Asia. The findings, published in
the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences , could
shed light on a pivotal step in
primate and human evolution, the
researchers said. The four teeth of
the prehistoric human
called afrasia djijidae as it forms a
missing link between Africa and
Asia were recovered after six
years of hard work. They date back
to 37 million years and resemble
those of another anthropoid, the
38-million-year-old Afrotarsius
libycus , recently found in the
Sahara Desert of Libya, Live
Science reported. The anthropoids
in Libya were far more diverse at
that early time in Africa than
scientists had thought, suggesting
they actually originated elsewhere.
And the close similarity
between Afrasia and Afrotarsius now
suggests that early anthropoids
colonised Africa from Asia, the
team said.
This migration from Asia
ultimately helps set the stage for the
later evolution of apes and humans
in Africa. Africa is the place of
origin of man, and Asia is the place
of origins of our far ancestors,
researcher Jean-Jacques Jaeger, a
palaeontologist at University of
Poitiers in France, said. However,
the researchers said that it
remained an open question how
early anthropoids actually
migrated from Asia to Africa. Back
then, the two continents were
separated by a more extensive
version of the modern
Mediterranean Sea, called the
Tethys Sea. Early anthropoids, the
team believes, may have either
swum from island to island from
Asia to Africa, or possibly have
been carried on naturally occurring
rafts of logs and other material
washed out to sea by floods and
storms. Around 34 million years
ago, there was a dramatic glacial
event that cooled the world climate
and affected Asia more than Africa.
During that crisis, we suppose
that all primitive Asian
anthropoids disappeared, Jaeger
said. The anthropoids we see in
Asia now, such as gibbons and
orangutans, immigrated from
Africa some 20 million years ago,
Jaeger added.
ARTIFICIAL BRAIN WITH BILLION
CONNECTIONS
Google has done the
unthinkable the creation of an
artificial brain from 16,000
computer processors, with more
than a billion connections. The
team led by Googles Jeff Dean then
fed it random images culled from
10 million YouTube videos and
let it learn by itself. Surprisingly,
the machine focused in on cats.
We never told it during the
training this is a cat, said Dean.
It basically invented the concept
of a cat.
Contrary to what appears to
be a widely-held intuition, our
experimental results reveal that it
is possible to train a face detector
without having to label images as
containing a face or not, says the
team. We also find that the same
network is sensitive to other high-
level concepts such as cat faces and
human bodies. Starting with
these learned features, we trained
our network to obtain 15.8 per cent
accuracy in recognising 20,000
object categories from ImageNet, a
leap of 70 per cent relative
improvement over the previous
state-of-the-art, it said, Daily
Mail reports. The brain was a
creation of the companys blue sky
ideas lab, Google X, reportedly
located in Googles Mountain View,
California, headquarters known
as the Googleplex. Engineers are
free to work on projects such as
connected fridges that order
groceries when they run low or
even tableware that can connect to
social networks. Other Google
engineers have reportedly
researched ideas as far-out as
elevators to space.
MANAGEMENT OF POWDERY MILDEW
IN SUNFLOWER
Sunflower is one of the largest
produced oilseed crops in the
country annually. Though it is
grown on a large scale for oilseed
production in India the crop suffers
huge losses due to many pest and
disease outbreaks. Especially
during the flowering and grain
formation stages sudden outbreak
of diseases like the powdery
mildew infects crop growth and
yield.
The disease produces white
powdery growth on the leaves.
White to grey mildew appears on
the upper surface of older leaves.
As plants mature black pin head
sized are visible in white mildew
areas. Infested leaves lose lustre,
curl, become pale in colour and die.
The disease appears on the upper
surface of leaves in the form of pale
yellow or pale brown minute
discoloured specks from which
powdery mass radiates to all sides
of leaves. Heavily infested leaves
dry and shed prematurely. Soon
these specks get covered with
whitish powdery mycelial growth
which increase in size and develop
to cover much of the plant area with
white powdery growth. Gradually,
the infection spreads to other parts
of the plant. The disease is
prevalent more under dry
conditions especially at the end of
the winter months.
Management
Reducing the likelihood of a
disease outbreak is more
effective than trying to control
the disease once it is
established.
Avoid growing crops in
situations of high humidity.
Morning watering limits the
build-up of humidity in the
crop overnight.
Avoid high plant densities
which leads to heavy
infection.
Application of sulphur dust
at 25-30kg/ha or calixin 1 ml/
litre is found effective in
reducing the disease
incidences.
Under high incidences
spraying of difenoconazole
1ml/litre is very effective.
A WEARABLE ROBOT HELPS DISABLED
PEOPLE WALK
Its a nice feeling to be
upright, to walk and to have people
at eye level, said a beaming Peter
Kossmehl at the Potsdam
Rehabilitation Centre in Germany.
The 40-year-old from the German
state of Brandenburg had just tried
out a bionic exoskeleton a
wearable, battery-powered robot
that enables paraplegics to take a
few steps again. The rehab centre
is one of the first facilities in Europe
to test the robot, called Ekso and
made by Ekso Bionics. The
California-based company
introduced Ekso in the fall of 2011.
Now it is to be tested worldwide
on paraplegics, stroke and multiple
sclerosis patients and other people
with lower-extremity paralysis or
weakness. In Germany, only
patients in Aachen have tested the
robot Ekso so far that was a few
weeks ago, said company
spokesman Bastian Schink. After
them, eight people in Potsdam
strapped on and tried out the
approximately 23-kilogram
exoskeleton. With the help of
sensors in its foot units, weight
shifts are converted into steps.
Id like to give my patients
the opportunity to stand erect again
as soon as possible, said Bettina
Quentin, director of physiotherapy
at the rehab centre south of Berlin.
But Quentin, like many experts,
warns against excessive
expectations. People who
function well with their wheelchair
will always be faster in them than
with the exoskeleton, said Jan
Schwab, head of spinal cord injury
research at the Charite University
Hospitals Department of
Experimental Neurology in Berlin.
The psychological benefits of a
patient standing upright shouldnt
be underestimated, though. The
reactions of the Potsdam patients
appeared to confirm this. Im not
walking by myself, he remarked.
Its only passive walking.
Kossmehl, too, thinks more
development work is needed. But
its just the right aid for the rehab
centre, he said. In the view of
Ruediger Rupp, director of the
Department of Experimental
Neurorehabilitation in the
Paraplegiology Clinic at
Heidelberg University Hospital, the
robot is no substitute for a
wheelchair, especially considering
that it is not suitable for all patients.
There are about 60,000 paraplegics
in Germany, of whom fewer than
10 per cent are candidates (for the
robot), he said. Thats a very
select group. Someone who can
hardly move his or her torso, for
example, would have great
difficulties with the robot.
A UNIQUE OBSERVATORY TO STUDY
QUAKES IN KOYNA-WARNA AREA
What kind of physical and
chemical changes take place in the
earths crust during an
earthquake? How does the
temperature change and will there
be some melting of the rock?
Answers to such fundamental
questions are expected from the
results of a unique Rs.300-crore
project under which scientists will
drill a seven-km deep borehole into
an earthquake zone for an on-the-
spot measurement of various
physical and chemical changes.
Under the project Deep Scientific
Drilling into Earthquake zone of
Koyna-Warna region
(Maharashtra) seismologists
and other scientists from the
National Geophysical Research
Institute (CSIR-NGRI) plan to
establish a deep borehole
observatory in the seismically-
active intra-plate fault zone in
Koyna-Warna region. Former NGRI
Director and currently a member of
the National Disaster Management
Authority (NDMA), Prof. Harsh K.
Gupta is the advisor of the project.
Continuous monitoring of this
borehole at seven-km depth would
enable measurement of physical
and mechanical properties of
rocks, hydrology, temperature and
other parameters in the near-field
of earthquakes before, during and
after their occurrence. It is
expected to lead to a better
understanding of the mechanics of
earthquake faulting and the
physics of reservoir trigger
mechanism said the project leader,
Dr. N. Purnachandra Rao. He said
the Koyna-Warna deep drill hole
would be the first of its kind in the
world to directly investigate
earthquakes in a stable continental
crust, unlike the deep borehole
drilled on a plate boundary fault
In San Andreas Fault in California.
Besides, that was up to a depth of
three km, whereas what we are
going to get here is the
representative earthquakes of the
region within a depth of seven
kilometres, Dr. Rao added.
Pointing out that Koyna-
Warna region was known for
Reservoir Triggered Seismicity
(RTS), he said that triggered
earthquakes have been occurring
regularly in an area of 20 x 30 sq.km
ever since the impounding in
Koyna reservoir in 1962. While the
largest earthquake in that region
was of 6.3 magnitude on Richter
scale, hundreds of others of varying
magnitude have been recorded.
Since there is no other source of
seismic activity within 50 km of the
Koyna-Warna region, it forms an
excellent natural laboratory for
earthquake studies, Dr. Rao said.
Explaining the importance of the
project, he said so far scientists
have been drawing indirect
inference from measurements on
the surface of the earth. We have
been measuring from the surface
and trying to understand what is
happening inside. But now we will
measure right at the spot.
This would be extremely
valuable knowledge for whole
world and has the potential to
facilitate earthquake forecasts in
future. A seismic network of 15
sensors operating in the region for
the last six years helped the
scientists to precisely locate the area
where the earthquakes are
occurring. This would help us to
plan the exact location for drilling,
Dr. Rao said. While earthquakes
normally occur in the crust down
to 35 km depth, the drilling could
be done only up to a depth of 12 km
with the present technology. Dr.
Rao said that most of the
earthquakes in that region were
occurring within 7 km and there
was no need to go beyond that
depth. Besides, they would be
drilling into hard granite rock and
the cost of the drilling would go up
exponentially as they go
down further.
Koyna-Warna region was like
a laboratory where earthquakes
were constantly occurring within
a shallow depth range. It makes it
feasible for drilling and setting up
an observatory for earthquake
studies, he added. Dr. Rao said
NGRI would be installing
seismometers, temperature loggers,
strain meters (to measure
deformities in the rock) and some
instruments to measure physical
parameters like density all along
the borehole at different depths up
to seven km. He observed that in
plate boundary zones where the
earthquakes were usually
extensive and deeper, it would be
difficult to pinpoint an area for
drilling. In a bid to supplement
these studies, a new institute,
Seismological Research Laboratory
was being established by the
Ministry of Earth Sciences at Karad,
Maharashtra. It is planned to
develop into a centre of excellence
in earthquake and related studies.
NEW TECHNIQUE FOR THE EARLY
DETECTION OF AUTISM
In a path breaking
development, a team of scientists
at Boston Childrens Hospital
invented an easy technique, that
will help doctors to diagnoses
autism in children earlier. The
pioneering technique will pave the
way for an early detection and
better treatment of the brain
disorder in young children. The
work detail of the new technique
was published in journal BMC
Medicine on 26 June 2012. The
technique, uses EEG scalp
scanning equipment used for
decades to diagnose epilepsy to
spot weaknesses in the brains
wiring. The researchers who
carried out tests on more than 1000
children aged between two and 12
years found that it was up to 90 per
cent accurate in detecting the
disease. Every two in 1000 children
worldwide is suffering from
Autism.
The symptoms of the disease
vary from child to child, however,
the disease have some very
common and invariable
characteristics like difficulty with
social interaction, difficulty with
communication and a need for
routine and repetitive behaviour.
Since there is no permanent cure of
the disease, patients are usually
treated by a combination of speech,
behavioural and other therapies.
Diagnosis of autism is more often a
lengthy and complicated process
and the average child is not
diagnosed until the age of five and
a half.
LABOUR SAVI NG TOOL FOR
SUGARCANE CULTIVATION
Periodical pruning of
branches in fruit trees is important
for getting a good yield. In crops
like cotton, castor, sesame, the
practice of nipping is essential for
enhancing the number of branches.
Similarly in sugarcane,
pruning of the mother shoot is an
important practice to be followed
by farmers.
Scarce labour
Though this practice is being
advocated, many farmers are not
following this due to labour
scarcity. But some of them use a
sickle or other available farm tools
to prune the main shoot. Existing
tools available today are not much
popular because the user needs to
bend down and hold the stem to
prune the sugarcane. While doing
so the probabilities of injuring the
hands due to presence of sharp
spines on the stem or the serrated
margin of the leaves pose a
problem.
Practical problem
These make labourers slow
down the operation. To address
these practical problems the
Planning and Monitoring
department, Tamil Nadu
Agricultural University,
Coimbatore has fabricated a tool.
Named cane seedling pruner, the
device has two parts, one a handle
and another hook with an internal
knife. The upper portion of the hook
has a two inch length pipe to hold
the handle stick. A labourer can
handle the tool with the help of the
handle and place the main shoot
in the inner portion of the knife.
With just one pull, the stem can be
pruned. Using this tool a person
can cover an entire sugarcane field
without bending his body.
Advantages
According to Dr. G.
Kathiresan, Director, Planning and
Monitoring department the farmer
can save the two thirds of money
required for pruning, it is easy to
use, aids growth of more tillers from
the pruned cane seedlings, can be
used to harvest fruits like papaya,
drumstick, sapota and the like, by
changing the length of the handle.
A WAY TO KEEP METAL SURFACES ICE,
FROST FREE
Harvard researchers have
invented a way to keep any metal
surface free of ice and frost a
discovery that will prove beneficial
in refrigeration systems, wind
turbines and the construction
industry. The surfaces treated with
the chemical quickly shed even
tiny, condensation droplets or frost.
The technology prevents ice sheets
from developing on surfaces and
any ice that does form, slides off
effortlessly. The group, led by
Joanna Aizenberg, professor of
materials science at the Harvard
School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences (SEAS), previously
introduced the idea that it was
possible to create a surface that
completely prevented ice with ice-
repellent coatings, inspired by the
water repellent lotus leaf, the
journal ACS Nano reports.
Yet this
technique
can fail
u n d e r
h i g h
humidity
as the
s u r f a c e
t e x t u r e s
b e c o m e
coated with
condensation a n d
frost. To combat this problem,
researchers recently invented a
radically different technology that
is suited for both high humidity
and extreme pressure, called SLIPS
(Slippery Liquid Infused Porous
Surfaces). Unlike lotus leaf-
inspired icephobic surfaces, which
fail under high humidity
conditions, SLIPS-based icephobic
(non-stick) materials, as our results
suggest, can completely prevent ice
formation at temperatures slightly
below zero degree Celsius while
dramatically reducing ice
accumulation and adhesion under
deep freezing, frost-forming
conditions, said Aizenberg.
GENOMES OF TOMATO SEQUENCED
Scientists at the Tomato
Genome Consortium (TGC)
successfully sequenced the
genomes of tomato. It will increase
the vegetables production
worldwide and decrease its price.
It took seven years for the scientists
to crack the genome. Indian
scientists were also the part of the
research. N a t i o n a l
R e s e a r c h
Centre on
P l a n t
Biotechnology,
Na t i o n a l
Institute of
P l a n t
Genome
Research,
T h e
University of
Delhi (South Campus) and
the Indian Agriculture Research
Institute under the auspices of the
Indian Initiative on Tomato
Genome Sequencing participated in
the TGC.
At present, Indian scientists
are trying to develop tomatoes that
can remain fresh for 15-30 days in
normal weather conditions.The
sequences provide a detailed
overview of the tomato genome,
revealing the orientation, order,
types and relative positions of their
35000 genes. The sequences will
help scientists decode the
relationships between tomato
genes and traits. It will also increase
their understanding of genetic and
environmental factors that play an
important role to determine a field
crops health and viability. The
Department of Biotechnology
funded the Indian initiative and it
was supported by the Indian
Council for Agricultural Research.
CO-4 GRASS USED AS FODDER
INCREASES MILK YIELD CONSIDERABLY
In Kerala, even though 60 per
cent of the milk requirement is met
by procurement from other states
like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and
Maharashtra, cattle rearing is fast
declining due to high cost of
production, labour shortage and
shrinking land. Heavy dependence
on other states for raw materials
pushes up the cost of concentrate
feeds. Dry straw (hay) used to feed
cattle has become scarce due to
decline in area under rice
cultivation. It becomes a dire
necessity for dairy farmers to start
growing green fodder (grass) if they
desire to run their unit profitably,
says Dr.S. Prabhu Kumar, Zonal
Project Director, ICAR, Zonal
Project Directorate, Bangalore.
GROW OWN FODDER
He adds that mere distribution
of milch animals by the
Government is of no use to farmers.
Along with the animals they must
be also made aware of the
importance of growing their own
fodder for the animals. Buying
several commercial feeds available
in the markets today is not
profitable for a small farmer and is
sure to burn a hole in their pocket,
according to him. Take the case of
the Koipuram Milk society
established on the banks of river
Pampa nearly 20 years back by one
Mr. Gopalakrishnan Nair to
prevent dairy farmers from being
exploited by middlemen who were
not providing timely price for the
milk supplied. During peak
production time farmers used to get
only Rs.2.40 per litre of milk while
the market price was Rs. 6 per liter.
The society was initially started
with 400 members and 1,500 litres
of milk was sent daily to the milk
marketing federation of Kerala for
further processing and sales. The
price was fixed by the society.
CULTIVATED ACREAGE
Since 1995 the society
encouraged fodder production for
its members and introduced
different fodder grasses like Congo
Signal, Gunnie grass, Hybrid
Napier like CO1, CO2 and CO3 in
the area. By 2009, 150 hectares in
the region were brought under
different types of fodder
cultivation. We brought four
cuttings of CO4 Hybrid Napier
grass from Tamil Nadu Agriculture
University Coimbatore, and
multiplied it in our KVK farm.
Today our farmers are selling this
fodder to several private farms in
Kollam, Allapuzha, Kottayam and
Idukki Districts. On an average
800-1,200 Kg of green fodder is
being sold today by the farmers of
this society, says Dr. C. P. Robert,
Programme Co-ordinator, CARD-
KVK (Christian agency for rural
development- Krishi Vigyan
Kendra), Pathanamthitta district,
Kerala. CARD KVK has been in the
forefront of fodder promotion in the
Pathanamthitta district and has
been conducting many trials to
identify suitable forage varieties for
the district. Dairy farmers are given
training on scientific fodder
management practices as and
when the need arises.
FEEDING RATIO
Feeding one bundle (15Kg) of
CO4 grass has been found to
increase milk yield by almost 200
ml per cow. Seeing this superior
growth characteristic, farmers are
replanting CO4 variety today and
it has almost replaced the previous
CO3 variety, says Dr.Robert. Till
date several lakh cuttings of this
grass have been sold to different
agriculture project areas in Kerala.
MARKETING
Farmers are selling this fodder
for Rs1.30 a kg and are able to
harvest 7-8 cuttings a year (the
cuttings may vary with the
availability of water). Many are
able to get an average yield of 270
tonnes per hectare and earn Rs.
15,000 as net profit annually. The
society also generates 300 days of
employment through this activity
a year, according to Dr. Robert.
DRONES TO COMBAT POACHERS
Conservationists in Nepal are
to send drone aircraft into the skies
in the battle to save the Himalayan
nations endangered tigers and
rhinos from poachers. WWF Nepal
said it had successfully tested two
unmanned conservation drones
earlier this month in Chitwan
National Park, in Nepals southern
plains, the home of a number of the
worlds rarest animals. The remote-
controlled aircraft, being used for
the first time in Nepal, would
monitor the animals and poachers
via cameras and GPS to capture
images and video, the organisation
said in a statement earlier this
week.
The aircraft, with a two-metre
wing span and a range of 25
kilometres can stay in the air for 45
minutes, flying at an altitude of up
to 200 metres. WWF Nepal has
been introducing new science and
technology to aid ongoing
conservation efforts in Nepal. The
conservation drones are the latest
addition, said Anil Manandhar,
the organisations representative
in Kathmandu. We believe that
this technology will be
instrumental in monitoring
Nepals flagship species and
curbing illegal wildlife trade.
Thousands of tigers and greater
one-horned rhinos, also known as
the Indian rhinoceros, once roamed
Nepal and northern India but their
numbers plunged over the last
century due to poaching and
human encroachment on their
habitat.
MI NOR PLANET NAMED AFTER
CHINESE SCIENTIST
A minor planet that was
discovered by Chinese
astronomers, has been named after
a well-known late Chinese scientist
and educator Yan Jici, the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS). The
minor planet, known as No 10611,
was discovered by the Beijing
Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program
under the National Astronomical
Observatories with the CAS in
1997, and was bestowed with the
name in memory of Yan, Xinhua
quoted CAS as saying. Yan, a
veteran Chinese scientist, was the
honorary chairman of the Central
Committee of the Jiu San Society
and vice-chairman of the Sixth and
Seventh National Peoples
Congress Standing Committee. He
was also one of the initiators of
University of Science and
Technology of China, one of
Chinas top universities. He
cultivated young experts in science
and technology. Yan died of illness
in Beijing in 1996, at the age of 96.
REAL-TI ME TRAI N RUNNI NG
INFORMATION SYSTEM
A joint team of Indian
railways and IIT-Kanpur
developed the real-time train
running information system, a
technology which will help a
mobile user to get the information
about the exact location of a train.
Under the new technology the user
will have to type the train number
and SMS it to 09415139139 or
09664139139 for getting the exact
location of a train on real-time
basis. The satelite-based train
tracking system was jointly
developed by the Centre For
Railway Information Systems
(CRIS), the IT arm of Indian
railways and Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT), Kanpur to
overcome the limitations of the
existing Train Running
Information System. At present the
real-time train running
information system service covers
36 pairs of premier trains. Some of
the trains which have been
provided with the new technology
include Mumbai Rajdhani,
Howrah Rajdhani, Dibrugarh
Rajdhani, Sealdah Duronto and
Shatabdi trains for Bhopal, Kanpur
and Amritsar. The Indian Railway
has allocated 121 crore rupees for
the project and the service is likely
to be extended to all major trains
over the next 18 months. The Indian
Railways has received the
permission from the Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO) to
operate the system through its
satellite. The railways department,
however, sought fresh order from
ISRO, to extend the facility to other
major trains.
ANGER SHOWS UP IN BRAIN SCAN
A new brain scan shows what
it looks like when a person runs out
of patience or loses self-control.
The study could also modify
previous thinking that considered
self-control to be like a
muscle.University of Iowa
neuroscientist William Hedgcock
confirms previous studies that
show self-control is a finite
commodity that is depleted by use.
But Hedgcocks study is the first to
actually show it happening in the
brain, using Functional Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (FMRI) images
that scan people as they perform
self-control tasks, the Journal of
Consumer Psychology reports. The
images show the anterior cingulate
cortex (ACC) fires with equal
intensity throughout the task. ACC
is the part of the brain that
recognises a situation in which self-
control is needed and says: Heads
up, there are multiple responses to
this situation and some might not
be good.
However, the dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) fires with
less intensity after prior exertion of
self-control. DLPFC is the part of
the brain that manages self-control
and says: I really want to do the
dumb thing, but I should overcome
that impulse and do the smart
thing. Hedgcock said that loss of
activity in the DLPFC might be the
persons self-control draining
away. The stable activity in the
ACC suggests people have no
problem recognising a temptation.
Although they keep fighting, they
have a harder and harder time not
giving in.
DEVELOPI NG A NOVEL SEARCH
ENGINE
A new project to develop a
search engine which will draw its
results from sensors is being
undertaken by computer scientists
at the University of Glasgow. The
European-funded project, known
as SMART, for Search engine for
Multimedia Environment
generated content, aims to
develop and implement a system
to allow internet users to search
and analyse data from these
sensors, a university release said.
By matching search queries with
information from sensors and
cross-referencing data from social
networks such as Twitter, users
will be able to receive detailed
responses to questions such as
What part of the city hosts live
music events which my friends
have been to recently? or How
busy is the city centre?
Currently, standard search
engines such as Google are not able
to answer search queries of this
type, the release added. Dr Iadh
Ounis, of the University of Glasgow
said: The SMART engine will be
able to answer high-level queries
by automatically identifying
cameras, microphones and other
sensors that can contribute to the
query, then synthesising results
stemming from distributed sources
in an intelligent way. SMART is
likely to be tested in a real city by
2014.
THE SOLAR TRANSIT OF VENUS
PRESENTED A SPECTACULAR SHOW
IN THE SPACE
In a rare space event, Venus,
the second closest planet from the
sun, passed in front of the sun on 5
June 2012. The rare planetary
display began shortly after 2200
GMT on 5 June 2012 in parts of
North America. Subsequently, it
was visible in Central America,
and the northern part of South
America. The view at the time the
Venus was crossing though the
Sun was incredible, as a tiny black
dot appeared on the solar surface.
Venus is 100th of the diameter of
the sun so while moving across
from one side to the other, just a
black spot placed over on the disc
of the sun. The celestial
phenomenon which repeats itself
in more than 100 year, will now be
rewitnessed only in 2117. The
space phenomenon is seen when
the Venus passes between the Sun
and the Earth. It occurs in intervals
of 8, 121, 8 and 105 years. The
last Transit of Venus occurred on 8
June 2004 and was visible across
India. The transit which took place
on 5 June 2012, completes the pair
of 2004-12. The latest Venus transit
is only the eighth since the
invention of the telescope, and the
last until 10-11 December 2117.
WHAT IS THE TRANSIT OF VENUS?
The Transit of Venus occurs
when it comes between the sun and
earth. Venus is significantly
smaller in size than the sun and
hence appears like a small dot on a
big plate.
DINOSAURS WEIGHT REVISED
One of the heftiest dinosaurs
that strode the Earth may have
weighed as much as six buses less
than thought, according to a new
formula that will also place other
dinosaurs in a lower weight class.
TheBerlin Brachiosaur was
previously estimated to weigh as
much as 80 tonnes. But a new
calculation of its mass, published
by scientists recently, suggests it
would have tipped the scales at a
relatively featherweight 23 tonnes.
Our results would suggest that
many of the previous estimates (for
all dinosaurs) are indeed too
heavy, study author Bill Sellers
told AFP.
For most dinosaurs, the
discrepancy would not be as big as
that for the Brachiosaurus, but
certainly we would suggest that
lighter estimates are likely to be
correct. The team of biologists
used 14 large-framed modern
mammals to devise a new method
of estimating body mass using only
the skeleton. Its a mathematical
technique that effectively wraps a
skin as tightly as it can around the
bones, explained Sellers of the
University of Manchester. This
gives us a skin and bones model
(from) which we can measure the
volume. The study revealed that
the weight of modern-day animals
was 21 per cent more than the so-
called wrapping volume
which equation was then applied
to the dinosaur bones.
OLDEST ROCK ART FOUND
An archaeologist says he
found the oldest piece of rock art in
Australia and one of the oldest in
the world- an Aboriginal work
created 28,000 years ago in an
Outback cave. The dating of one of
the thousands of images in the
Northern Territory rock shelter
known as Nawarla Gabarnmang
will be published in the next edition
of the Journal of Archaeological
Science . University of Southern
Queensland archaeologist Bryce
Barker said Monday that he found
the rock in June last year but only
recently had it dated at New
Zealands University of Waikato
radiocarbon laboratory.
Its the
o l d e s t
unequivocally
d a t e d
rock art in
Australia
and among
the oldest in
the world,
Barker said.
STEM COLOUR
The stem of all plants is green
due to the presence of hypodermal
chlorenchyma in its cortex. But
when the stem axis, especially the
dicot stem axis, ceases to elongate
and undergoes secondary growth,
its green colour disappears and
becomes pale or dark brown in
colour. The secondary growth is not
only responsible for change in
surface colour but also contributes
to the thickness of the axis due to
the formation of periderm. This is
effected in the cortex by a lateral
meristem called phellogen and the
formation of secondary vascular
tissues (secondary xylem and
secondary phloem), which is
effected in the stele (vascular
cylinder) by the vascular cambium.
Among these two tissue gains due
to secondary growth, the periderm
is responsible for the change in
stem surface colour.
The periderm is the protective
tissue of secondary origin
replacing the primary structure of
the young stem, the epidermis. It
consists of the phellogen (cork
cambium), the meristem that
produces the periderm;
the phellem (commonly
called cork), the
protective tissue formed
outwardly by the
p h e l l o g e n .
The phelloderm , a
living parenchyma
tissue, is formed
inwardly by the phellogen. In
a stem, the periderm is most
commonly formed in the sub-
epidermal layer. In some species,
however, the first periderm appears
rather deep within the stem. All the
living tissues above the periderm
die due to the insertion of the
nonliving cork between these
tissues and the living inner tissues
of the plant. Now the stem surface
is exposed by the cork cells. The
walls of the cork cells may be
coloured brown, yellow or the
lumen of these cells may contain
resinous or tanniferous materials.
That is why the older stems exhibit
brown colouration on their surface.
CHINA LAUNCHED SHENZHOU-9 INTO
SPACE
China on 16 June 2012
launched its fourth human
spaceflight Shenzhou-9 from the
Jiuquan satellite launch centre in
north-western Gansu state. The
30.3 feet long and 9.1 feet diameter,
Shenzhou -9 spacecraft will
conduct the first manned docking
mission and set the foundation for
Chinese plans to build a space
station by 2020. Shenzhou-9 is
expected to take at least 20 days to
complete its space mission. In the
course of the mission the crew will
accomplish automated docking
procedure followed by scientific
experiments, technical tests and
physical exercises conducted in the
space lab. The crew will conduct
manual docking with the
Tiangong-1 or heavenly palace
space laboratory module, which
has been orbiting the earth since 29
September 2011.
China, notwithstanding its
assurance given to the world
community that it will not get
indulged in space warfare, is
spending billions of dollars to
accomplish its ambitious space
programmes. China, in December
2011, had revealed a five-year space
programme, in which it vowed to
set up a space lab and collect
sample from the moon by 2016.
Earlier, the Chinese
government had
undertaken a mission
to get to the moon and
set up a manned space
station by year 2020.
China, launched its
manned space programme
in year 1999 with the launch
of Shenzhou-1 with no crew
on board. In 2001, Shenzhou-2 was
blasted off with small animals
aboard, and in 2003,
China launched its
first manned space
craft. Since then, it has
completed a space
walk in 2008 and an
unmanned docking
between a module
and rocket in 2011.
The launch of
Shenzhou-9 is a
testimony to Chinas
determination to develop its
technological competence vis-a-vis
United States and Russia.
FIRST CHINESE WOMAN IN SPACE
One of two female fighter
pilots will become the first Chinese
woman in space later this month,
after the two were short-listed for a
place in the three-person team that
will blast off in the Shenzhou-9
spacecraft, the state news agency
Xinhua said. Chinese media
described Major Liu Yang, from
Henan, as a hero pilot who
achieved a successful emergency
landing after a dramatic
bird-strike
incident
spattered the
windshield of her plane with
blood. Meanwhile, her rival,
Captain Wang Yaping, from
Shandong, is said to have flown
rescue missions during the
Sichuan earthquake and piloted a
cloud-seeding plane to help clear
the skies of rain for the Beijing
Olympics in 2008. They are
selected as members of the first
batch of female astronauts in China
because of their excellent flight
skills and psychological quality,
said Xinhua.
This months mission is
regarded as an important stage in
Chinas ambitious space
programme. The Shenzhou-9 will
perform our countrys first manned
space docking mission with the
orbiting Tiangong-1 space lab
module, Zhou Jianping, chief
designer of the manned space
program, told state media. This
will be a significant step in Chinas
manned space flight history, he
said. China will be the eighth
country to see one of its female
citizens go into space, and only the
third to put one there itself.
Valentina Tereshkova of the Soviet
Union became the first woman to
go into space in 1963. Both the
women short-listed are in their 30s
and have one child: Chinese
authorities have decreed that only
mothers can train as astronauts,
apparently because of their concern
that spaceflight might affect
womens fertility. Earlier this year,
the deputy editor-in-chief of an
official magazine said women
astronauts should also have no
scars which might open and
bleed in space nor body odour.
They even must not have decayed
teeth because any small flaw might
cause great trouble or a disaster in
space, said Pan Zhihao of Space
International , published by the
China Academy of Space
Technology.
But he also told China Daily
that female astronauts tend to be
more keen and sensitive with
better communication skills than
their male counterparts.
EARLIEST EVIDENCE OF DAIRYING
PRACTICES IN SAHARA FOUND
Researchers from the
University of Bristol and other
institutions have found the first
unequivocal chemical evidence of
dairying practices by Saharan
people about 5,000 years ago at
a time when the region was in a
humid phase and had plenty of
plant cover. Researching the earliest
evidence of dairying has so far been
confined to Europe, Near East and
Eurasia. This is the first time an
attempt is made to study African
samples. The results are published
today (June 21) in Nature. Till date
evidence of domestication of cattle,
sheep and goats came from faunal
samples. But faunal remains have
been highly fragmentary and
poorly preserved. Reconstructing
evidence of herding has therefore
been difficult. Even indirect
evidence of dairying is missing.
Of course, rock paintings and
engravings have provided some
compelling indirect evidence. The
researchers therefore turned to
molecular and isotope analysis of
absorbed food residues found on
potsherds to know the details. The
rationale is simple: analysing food
residues is a sure way of
understanding diet and
subsistence practices of humans a
few thousand years ago.
Making the study possible
has been the exemplary
preservation of absorbed organic
residues, particularly lipids, on
potsherds. This is unlike in the case
of European sites where only 40 per
cent of potsherds provided any
evidence of lipids, and that to at
very low concentrations. This
remarkable preservation [in the
case of African samples] is likely to
be related to the extremely arid
conditions prevailing in the region
in the last hundreds of years. The
researchers used carbon 13
isotopic ratios to study the major
alkanoic acids of milk fat. The lipids
belonged to three categories
high abundance of C16:0 and
C18:0 (lipid numbers) fatty acids
derived from degraded animals
fats. There were carbon isotopes
(C13 to C18) which are
demonstrative of bacterial origin
and diagnostic of ruminant
animal fats. In the second
category, the carbon isotopes found
were diagnostic of plant oils and a
certain kind of wax of vascular
plants. The third type of residue
indicates the drying reaction of
plant oils, and reflects either
processing of both plant and
animal products in the same vessel
or the multiuse of the vessels.
Of the three types, only those
indicative of degraded animal fats
were taken up for detailed analysis.
Compared with present day animal
fats, about 50 per cent of lipid
samples recovered from the
potsherds fall within or on the edge
of isotopic range of dairy fats. About
33 per cent fall within the isotope
range for ruminant adipose fats.
The unambiguous conclusion is
that the appearance of dairy fats
correlates with the abundant
presence of cattle bones in the cave
deposits, suggesting a full pastoral
economy, they write. They also
found unequivocal evidence for
extensive processing of dairying
products in pottery in the Libyan
Sahara between 5,200-3,800 years
ago. This confirms that milk
played an important part in the diet
of these prehistoric pastoral
people. This is quite surprising
considering the fact that these
people were able to consume milk
despite suffering from lactose
intolerance. The study thus
provides a window to the
evolutionary context for the
emergence of lactase persistence in
Africa.
ICRISAT, ICAR JOINTLY TO FIGHT
CLIMATE CHANGE
The International Crops
Research Institute for the Semi-Arid
Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Indian
Council of Agricultural Research
(ICAR) have joined forces to adapt
new measures to tackle the
growing climate related risks and
constraints that prevail in rural
areas. The two organizations and
their partners emphasized
adoption of a different perspective
and approach by listening,
observing and learning from the
people that they are supposed to
help with research findings,
technology and knowhow.
According to a press release from
ICRISAT, Director General of
ICRISAT Dr William D Dar had
mentioned in his keynote address
that they would hold themselves
accountable. We will measure
results and stay focused on clear
goals: boosting farmers incomes
and over the next decade helping
50 million men, women and
children lift themselves out of
poverty, he had said, according to
the release.
As is well known, smallholder
farmers living in the semi-arid
tropics and coastal areas are most
vulnerable to changes brought
about by climate change. Director
General of ICAR Dr S Ayyappan
was also present at the meeting. In
his opening address he had said
that the collaboration of the two
institutions was not recent but
dated back a few decades. The
collaboration has been beneficial,
particularly in addressing the
farmers problems. As far as
climate change is concerned, it is a
global phenomenon. The increase
in the atmospheric temperature due
to rising greenhouse gas levels
such as carbon dioxide, methane
and nitrous oxide has been the
prime driver of climate change.
During the deliberations, it
was reported that the early signs of
increasing climatic variability are
gradually becoming more visible in
the form of increasing melting of
Himalayan glaciers, flash floods,
and intense rainfall over short
periods. In the case of India, climate
change would manifest itself in
many ways. For one, it would
increase the already existing
stresses thereby increasing the
vulnerability of food production
and livelihoods of the farming
community. And predictably, the
small and marginal farmers are
most vulnerable to the vagaries of
climate change.
Why do all metals turn red when
heated?
Materially, many of the hard
metals are considered as
blackbodies. All those materials
that are perfect absorbers of all
wavelengths of light when they are
cool and emitters of all wavelengths
of light when they are heated, are
known as blackbodies. However,
the wavelength (or colour) of the
light they emit with greatest
efficiency (maximum light
throughput) varies with the
temperature that they are heated to
or maintained at. Let us know this
wavelength as lambda max. This
means that a blackbody body
heated to a particular temperature
would appear in the colour of the
lambda max wavelength because
it is at that wavelength that the
optical energy is emitted from the
body with maximum throughput.
The lambda max and the
temperature at which the
blackbody is heated to are inversely
related; the hotter the black body
the lower is the lambda max. This
is a universal law, known as
Wiens Displacement Law and is
independent of the chemical
composition and physical fabric of
the solid body as long as the body
behaves as a blackbody when
heated.
In other words, the
mathematical product of the
lambda max and the absolute
temperature of the body is a
universal constant, known as
Wiens Constant with a value of
about 2.9x10{+-}{+3}mK when
wavelength is taken in metres (m)
and the temperature in Kelvin scale
(K). Accordingly, metals, behaving
like blackbodies, would appear in
red colour (wavelength of about
700 nanometres) when heated to
about 3,800 K (or about 3,500
o
C). It
is on this basis (Wiens
Displacement Law) that metals
turn red when heated (to about
3,500
o
C). It is also the reason why
metal objects exposed to
blacksmiths kiln change their
appearance from red to yellow via
orange because of gradually raising
temperature of the kiln. Finally, it
is worthwhile to know that the
surface temperatures of the distant
stars and heavenly bodies are
estimated on the basis of the
spectrometric measurement of the
lambda max they emit (after
accounting for the Doppler Shift).
Since Sun appears yellow, its
surface temperature is estimated to
be about 5,500
o
C.
INDIAN SCIENTIST GOT US PATENT
FOR CANCER TREATMENT
In a pioneering innovation,
the nanotechnology scientist, Rao
Papineni and his colleagues
invented a cancer treatment system
in which a nano-particle carries the
payload of anti-cancer drug and
releases it only in the cancerous
cell, thus protecting healthy cells
around. The newly invented system
got patented in the USA on 19 June
2012. The title of the patent is High
Capacity Non-Viral Vectors. The
non-viral vectors are nano-
particles. The nano-particles will
allow the drug particle to target
the diseased site with pinpoint
precision. The nano-particles will
allow the drug to be released
inside the diseased cell. They will
enhance the function of the drug.
The nano-particles will carry the
drug precisely with minimal
collateral damage to healthy
tissue. Papineni, along with his
fellow researchers applied for the
patent in 2009. Papineni is
presently the chief scientist and
senior principal investigator in
medical applications of
nanotechnology at Carestream
Health, Inc USA.
WORLD IPV6 LAUNCH DAY
ORGANIZED BY INTERNET SOCIETY
World IPv6 (Internet Protocol
version 6) Launch Day held
globally on 6 June 2012. All the
major Internet Service Providers,
networking equipment
manufacturers and web
companies around the world
came together on the occasion, to
permanently enable IPv6 for their
products and services. The day,
organized by Internet Society,
represents a major milestone in the
global deployment of IPv6.
Previous year the World IPv6 Day
was observed on 8 June wherein ,
top websites and Internet Service
Providers around the world, had
joined together for a successful 24-
hour global-scale trial of the new
Internet Protocol, IPv6. World IPv6
Day 2012 was an event sponsored
and organized by the Internet
Society and several large content
providers to test public IPv6
deployment. It was announced on
12 January 2011 with five
anchoring companies: Facebook,
Google, Yahoo, Akamai
Technologies, and Limelight
Networks.
WHAT IS IPV6 ?
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version
6) is a latest version of the Internet
Protocol (IP) which will succeed
IPv4, the communications protocol
which is currently being used to
direct almost all Internet traffic.
IPv6 will allow the Internet to
support many more devices by
greatly increasing the number of
possible addresses.
PROBI OTI CS CAN REDUCE
OCCURRENCE OF DIARRHEA
Probiotics when consumed
regularly may be able to prevent
many acute diarrhoea cases in
children. In 2010, diarrhoea killed
more than 210,000 children aged
less than five years in India, The
L a n c e t r e p o r t e d
recently . The mortality
figures were nearly
19,000 in neonates and
193,000 in children aged
1-59 months. The Food
and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) and
World Health
Organisation (WHO)
describe probiotics as
microorganisms that
exhibit beneficial health effects for
hosts when a sufficient amount of
them are ingested. Masanobu
Nanno, Associate Director of
Yakult Central Institute for
Microbiology Research, Yakult
Honsha Co Ltd, Tokyo, told a group
of journalists that a clinical trial
using the companys probiotic
drink Lactobacillus casei strain
Shirota (LcS) in an urban slum
community in Kolkata showed
promise.
The clinical trial, funded by
the company, was conducted by
the Kolkata-based National
Institute of Cholera and Enteric
Diseases. The funding agency
had no role in the design, data
collection, data analysis, data
interpretation or writing the
report, the paper noted. The trial
was community-based,
randomised, double-blind and
placebo-controlled involving 3,758
children aged 1-5 years from ward
66 in Kolkata Municipal
Corporation. While 608 subjects in
the study group consumed the
companys probiotic drink every
day for 12 weeks, the control group
(674 children) received a placebo.
The children were followed up for
a further 12 weeks.
At the end of the 24-week
study period, the group that
received the probiotic drink
showed reduced occurrence of
acute diarrhea. The level of
protective efficacy for the probiotic
group was 14 per cent, stated the
paper published in the
journal Epidemiology and Infection.
But the authors warn that there is
insufficient evidence for
extrapolation of these results for
global recommendation. Besides
good sanitation and safe drinking
water, probiotics may probably
have a role in preventing many
deaths caused by diarrhea. The 25
to 35-feet-long gastrointestinal tract
of an adult human has about 100
trillion bacteria good, neutral
and pathogenic microorganisms.
This is approximately ten times the
total number of cells in the human
body. In all, the digestive tract has
some 400 different types of bacteria
that keep the harmful bacteria
under check. The intestinal
epithelium by itself acts as a
physical barrier to the pathogenic
bacteria. However, when the
number of good bacteria declines,
pathogenic micro-organisms can
destroy the integrity of the intestinal
wall and cause many illnesses,
diarrhea included. The rationale of
the study was therefore to populate
the digestive tract with good
bacteria using the drink rich
in Lactobacilli casei strain Shirota.
It is reasonably well established
that probiotics can shorten the
duration of diarrhea by half-a-
day, said Dr. B.S. Ramakrishna,
Professor and Head of
Gastroenterology, CMC, Vellore. In
a community the incidence of
regular diarrhea can come down by
15 per cent. Similar benefits have
been seen in other two types of
diarrhea as well travellers
diarrhea and antibiotic-induced
diarrhea. Probiotics has shown
some beneficial effects in the case
of travellers diarrhea, Dr.
Ramakrishna said. There is clear
evidence of prevention and
shortening of duration by half-a-
day in the case of antibiotic-
induced diarrhea.
The effectiveness of probiotics
in preventing and even reducing
the duration of diarrhea has been
reported in several studies. For
instance, a 2006 meta-analysis
found probiotics as safe and
effective for both treatment and
prevention of acute pediatric
diarrhea. The study was
published in the International
Journal of Probiotics and Prebiotics .
A 2002 study published in
the European Journal of Clinical
Nutrition found Lactobacilli casei to
significantly reduce the duration of
diarrhea in children. The study was
carried out on 75 subjects at the Delhi
University College Hospital and
another 75 in a resettlement colony in
East Delhi. Probiotics are generally
beneficial in treatment and prevention
of gastrointestinal diseases, noted a
2012 PLoS ONE paper. It went on to
state that the type of disease and
probiotic species (strain) are the most
important factors to take into
consideration when choosing to use
probiotics for treatment or prevention
of gastrointestinal disease.
SCIENCE EXPRESS FLAGGED OFF
Science Express a train for
promoting scientific tempers
began its fifth journey, this time to
raise awareness about the
countrys unique biodiversity. The
Science Express Biodiversity
Special (SEBS) was flagged off.
It will be stationed at
Hyderabad from October 9-19
when the city would host the 11th
meeting of the Conference of Parties
to the Convention on Biological
Diversity. The train will culminate
for the year at Gandhinagar. Of the
16 coaches comprising the SEBS,
eight are dedicated to showcasing
biodiversity spread across the
various bio-geographical zones.
4,000-YEAR-OLD TOMB FOUND
Archaeologists have
discovered a 4,000-year-old tomb in
Egypt that contains a sarcophagus
inscribed with ancient funeral texts
as well as ritual objects. The tomb
dates from ancient Egypts First
Intermediate period (2181-2055
Powerful new approach to
disable flu virus
A new protein that can combat
deadly flu epidemics has been
developed. The research,
says Nature Biotechnology ,
shows ways to use manufactured
genes as antivirals, which disable
key functions of the flu virus.
Key heart cells from
transformed stem cells
In the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences ,
a team of scientists describes a way
to transform human stem cells into
critical heart muscle cells by simple
manipulation of one key
developmental pathway.
Hidden flower features are
crucial for bees
Scientists at the Universities of
Cambridge and Bristol studying
special plant petal cells have found
that the velcro-like cells play a
crucial role in helping bees grip
flowers especially when the wind
gets up.
Many applications of
copper-nickel nanowires
Films made with copper-nickel
nanowires are stable and
inexpensive, suitable for printed
electronics, electronic paper, smart
packaging and interactive clothing.
Marine reserves can restock
nearby reefs
The first conclusive evidence,
reported in the journal Current
Biology, that marine reserves can
help restock exploited fish
populations on neighbouring reefs
which are open to fishing has been
found.
Most comprehensive genetic
analysis of corn
An interdisciplinary team, led by
researchers at Cornell University
has just published the most
comprehensive analysis to date of
the corn genome, which could lead
to improved varieties of the crop.
Tuatara shows chewing is
not just for mammals
An Anatomical Record paper
shows how the reptile, tuatara, slices
its food like a steak knife. The
complex chewing technique raises
doubts about the supposed link
between chewing and high
metabolism in mammals.
Splitting the unsplittable
Researchers from the University of
Bonn have just shown how a single
atom can be split into its two halves,
pulled apart and put back together
again.
Faster, more sensitive
photodetector
Researchers have developed a
highly sensitive detector of infrared
light that can be used in detection
of chemical and biochemical
weapons from a distance.
Will banning large soda
help in obesity battle?
In an effort to combat obesity in New
York City, its mayor has proposed
a ban on the sale of large sodas. But
experts at the University of
Alabama at Birmingham say
focusing on one product is not
enough.
Antioxidant as treatment
for autism
A specific antioxidant supplement
may be an effective therapy for some
features of autism, according to a
pilot trial.
Giant insects exited with
evolution of birds
Giant insects ruled the skies when
Earths atmosphere was rich in
oxygen. Then came the birds. After
that, insects got smaller despite
rising oxygen levels, says a new
study at the University of
California, Santa Cruz.
B.C.). Very little archaeological
evidence survives from this
period. Ritual objects made from
alabaster copper, terracotta and
other materials were found in the
tomb in Deir al-Barsha area in
al-Minya province, around 250
km from Cairo.
Controlling the wetting
behaviour of liquids
Fraunhofer Institute has developed
a computer simulation that
optimises and designs surfaces so
that as little liquid as possible sticks
to them. The goal: to better
understand and control the wetting
behaviour of liquids.
Cells at origin of cervical
cancer found
Researchers have found the cells at
the origin of cervical cancer, in a
discovery that could offer new ways
to prevent and treat the disease.
Earth recovered slowly from
mass extinction
Earths life was nearly wiped out
250 million years ago. It took some
10 million years for Earth to recover
from the greatest mass extinction of
all time, says a new study in Nature
Geoscience .
Search engine based on the
behaviour of ants
An algorithm published in the
journal Applied Intelligence is based
on ants behaviour when they are
searching for food, which accelerates
the search for relationships present
in social networks.
For female butterflies,
flashier is better
While female butterflies are
programmed to identify males of
their species by the patterns of spots
on their wings, a Yale University
study has found that they learn to
like the flashier ones more.
Largest database of
Martian impact craters
A University of Colorado Boulder
team recently finished counting,
outlining and cataloguing 635,000
impact craters on Mars the single
largest database ever compiled of
impacts on a planet in our solar
system.
March 7 solar flare is
strongest eruption, yet
The powerful March 7 solar flare,
which earned a classification of
X5.4 based on the peak intensity of
its X-rays, is the strongest eruption
so far observed by Fermis Large
Area Telescope (LAT).
Testing in artificial gravity
NASA will expand its capabilities
for plant and animal tissue
investigations on the ISS with the
delivery of a new centrifuge this
summer.
Cardiac muscle patches
created from stem cells
A cutting-edge method developed at
the University of Michigan Center
for Arrhythmia Research
successfully uses stem cells to create
heart cells capable of mimicking the
hearts crucial squeezing action.
Cambodia, last vulture
bastion in SE Asia
In face of a precipitous slide toward
extinction across the Asian
continent, the vultures of Cambodia
have persisted, giving
conservationists hope, according to
authors from the Wildlife
Conservation Society.
Excessive endurance
training can be harmful
A new study in Mayo Clinic
Proceedings outlines in detail the
mechanisms, pathophysiology, and
clinical manifestations of
cardiovascular injury from too
much endurance exercise, due to
pathologic changes in the heart.
Climate, habitat, man killed
mammoths
Rising temperatures, changing
vegetation and the spread of humans
all contributed to the extinction of
the woolly mammoth, according to
a new study.
Mapping forests to combat
climate change
Countries like Brazil are using data
from NASA satellites to track and
measure their forests in advance of
a United Nations effort to reduce
climate change by providing carbon
credits for protected land.
Slimmer, more efficient and
cheaper solar cells
Researchers from North Carolina
State University have created a
solar cell with an active layer of
amorphous silicon that is only 70
nanometres thick without sacrificing
the cells ability to absorb solar
energy.
$257 billion investment in
renewable energy
Despite tough competition for
manufacturers, global investment in
renewable power last year increased
to a record $257 billion, say reports
by the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP).
Nanoparticles linked to
major health problems
Exposure to nanoparticles in
pollution and nanotechnology
products can have a serious impact
on health, linking it to rheumatoid
arthritis and other serious autoimmune
diseases, says Nanomedicine .
Key part of plants rapid
response system
Some plant enzymes are cellular
stop/go switches that turn hormone
responses on and off to deal with
changes in temperature,
precipitation, soil nutrients or
defend the plant from pathogen
attack, says a study in Science .
Sifting through a trillion
electrons
Supercomputers, particle colliders,
and telescopes are generating so
much data, so fast, scientists fear they
will not keep up with the deluge.
Cassinis images shed light
on Saturns jets
In a new study in the journal Icarus ,
scientists used images collected over
several years by NASAs Cassini
spacecraft to discover that the heat
from within Saturn powers the
planets jet streams, churning east
and west.
Prescience derived from
past experiences
A study has found how a part of the
brain helps predict future events
from past experiences, shedding
light on the function of the
frontopolar cortex.
More oil from algae by
feeding them carbon
Findings in Plant and Cell
Physiology show that ramping up
algaes overall metabolism by
feeding them more carbon increases
oil production as the organisms
continue to grow.
Clues to nervous system
from sponges
Sponges have all the same genes like
higher organisms to build neuronal
synapses. But a mechanism that
coordinates the expression of gene is
missing in sponges, a study in
PNAS journal revealed.
Lab-on-a-chip detects toxic
vapours
A lab-on-a-chip technology that
measures trace amounts of air
contaminants was successfully
field-tested in homes near Utah Air
Force Base.
Math formula leads to
source of pollution
The leaking of environmentally
damaging pollutants into our waters
and atmosphere could soon be
counteracted by a simple
mathematical algorithm, according
to research published in the
journal Inverse Problems .
Greenhouse gases role in
ocean warming
New research in Nature Climate
Change shows that the observed
ocean warming over the last 50
years in climate models should
include the impacts of increases in
greenhouse gases during the 20th
century.
Global second warmest May
month on record
The globally-averaged temperature
for May 2012 marked the second
warmest May since record keeping
began in 1880. The temperatures
were measured over global land and
ocean surfaces.
NuSTAR can now see
highest energy X-rays
NASAs Nuclear Spectroscopic
Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has
successfully deployed its lengthy
mast, giving it the ability to see the
highest energy X-rays in our
universe, a step closer in the hunt
for black holes.
Help Line No. 011- 45151781
MAHENDRA SI NGH DHONI
APPOINTED BRAND AMBASSADOR
Indian Criket Captain
Mahendra Singh Dhoni was
appointed as a brand ambassador
of Nepal Cricket Association,
Nepal on 17 June 2012.The
announcement was made by Posta
Bahadur Bogati, Minister for
Tourism and Civil Aviation of
Nepal. Dhoni will promote and
develop cricket in Nepal. Dhoni
also advised Nepal cricket officials
to get permission from
International Cricket Council to
construct a stadium. The stadium
would likely to promote cricket in
the country. Mahendra Singh
Dhoni was born on 7 July 1981 in
Ranchi, Bihar. At present, he is the
captain of the Indian ODI,
Twenty20 team and Indian Test
team. India won the 2011 Cricket
World Cup under his captaincy.
DANISH KANERIA WAS BANNED BY
ECB
Pakistani Cricket player
Danish Kaneria was banned by
England and Wales Cricket Board
on 21 June 2012. He was given a
lifetime ban because he was found
guilty for corruption. He is the third
Pakistani player who is banned
because of match fixing. In
addition, in the year 2000 Salim
Malik and Ata-ur-rehman were
banned for lifetime from Cricket
because of match-fixing. Moreover,
Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer
and Mohammad Asif were banned
by the International Cricket
CRICKET
Sports
Council and jailed by the court of
United Kingdom in the year 2010
for fixing specific parts of a Test
match. Danish Kaneria is 31 years
old. He took 261 wickets in 61 Tests
for Pakistan. He had taken 15
wickets in 18 one-day
internationals.
KEVI N PI ETERSEN ANNOUNCED
RETIREMENT
Ace England Batsman Kevin
Pietersen announced to retire from
limited-overs edition of
International cricket. He, however,
will continue to play test cricket for
the country. Pietersen who had
made his international debut in
2004 has played a total of 127 one-
day internationals and 36
Twenty20 internationals. South
Africa-born Pietersen has scored
4184 one-day international runs at
an average of 48.14.
He is the sixth
highest rungetter
from England. With
176 runs at 37 he is
also the only
England player to
cross four-digit
mark in the T20
format of the game.
Pietersen decided to
retire as the England Cricket Board
had put forth a selection policy
under which any player deciding
to retire from either of the one-day
formats, will be considered retire
from both formats.
FRENCH OPEN
Rafael Nadal won French Open
Mens Singles Title
Spaniard Rafael Nadal on 11
June 2012 defeated Serbian Novak
Djokovic to clinch French Open
Singles Title 2012. Second seeded
Nadal beat top seed Djokovic in a
final clash which lasted four sets.
With this victory the Spaniard also
surpassed the Legend Bjorn Borgs
6 French Open title feat. Earlier
Nadal had defeated David Ferrer
in the Semi Finals to make to the
finals of the tournament; While
TENNIS
Djokovic had overwhelmed Swiss
Roger Federer. The French Open
title marked his 11th Gand Slam in
a career marked by 16 Grand Slam
finals. Currently he is one short off
Roy Emerson, three off Pete
Sampras and five title away from
the arch rival Roger Federer s
record 16 grand slam titles.
MARIA YURYEVNA SHARAPOVA WON
FRENCH OPEN WOMENS SINGLES
TITLE
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova
won French Open 2012 on 9 June
2012. She defeated Saria Erani from
Italy by 6-3 and 6-2. Sharapova is a
Russian Lawn Tennis Player. She
won French open for the first time
in her career. French open was held
at Rolland Garros in Paris. The
tournament was run by the
International Tennis Federation
(ITF). French Open 2012 was a
sixteen-day long tournament. The
tournament consists of both mens
and womens singles and doubles
and as well as a mixed doubles
events. Moreover Sharapova was
the winner of Wimbledon in 2004,
the US Open in 2006 and the
Australian Open in 2008.
SANI A MI RZA AND MAHESH
BHUPATHI WON MIXED DOUBLES
TITLE
Sania Mirza and Mahesh
Bhupathi on 7 June 2012 won their
second Grand Slam title together
and first French Open trophy after
beating Santiago Gonzalez of
Mexico and Klaudia Jans Ignacik
of Poland in the mixed doubles
final, in Paris. Playing their third
Grand Slam final together, the
seventh seeded Indian pair scored
a 7-6, 6-1 win over the Polish-
Mexican pair in one hour and 13
minutes at the Court Philippe
Chatrier. It is the second career
Grand Slam title for Sania, while
the 12th Major trophy for Bhupathi,
who now has won eight mixed
doubles trophies. Sania and
Bhupathi had won the 2009
Australia Open and it is their first
Grand Slam title since then. Sania
had become the first woman tennis
player from India to win a Grand
Slam with that Australian Open
trophy.
DRESS CODE I NTRODUCED I N
WIMBLEDON FIRST TIME
Dress Code was introduced
for the first time in Wimbledon by
the organiser All England Club on
24 June 2012. All England Club has
been hosting tennis
championships from last 150
years. The guidelines for the dress
code were escorted by the picture
of a male and female model. The
pictures would likely to
differentiate in between acceptable
dress and unacceptable dress. The
Acceptable dresses were lounge
suit or tailored jacket, shirt, tie,
trousers and dress shoes. Boys
under 11were not required to wear
a jacket or a tie. Ladies would wear
the similar standard dress. The
Unacceptable dresses were T-
shirts, jeans and trainers, bare
midriffs, jeans and flip flops. For
Women, Strapless tops and shorts,
zipper jackets, casual or scuffed
shoes, hoodies, pumps and short
skirts.
AITA ANNOUNCED TWO TEAMS FOR
MENS DOUBLES FOR LONDON
OLYMPICS 2012
The All Indian Tennis
Association (AITA) on 21 June 2012
announced to send two mens
doubles team for London Olympics
2012. The team involves top player
Leander Paes with low-ranked
Vishnu Vardhan and second
ranked Mahesh Bhupathi with
third ranked Rohan Bopanna. The
hassle started when AITA decided
to send two teams in
London Olympics 2012
which were not acceptable
by Paes. Earlier, AITA
announced Leander Paes
and Mahesh Bhupathi as
a team for Indias doubles
entry for the London
Olympics 2012. But
Bhupathi refused to play
with Paes because of
differences of their
opinions. He appealed to
be paired with Rohan
Bopanna. Bhupathi and Bopanna
showed their strong hope to play
together. Moreover, AITA
announced Paes to play with
Tennis player Sania Mirza in the
mixed doubles tournament at the
Olympics. Sania Mirza will get the
wildcard entry on 28 June 2012.
INTERNATIONAL JUNIOR SHOOTING
CHAMPIONSHIP
Tejaswini Mule won Silver
medal at International Junior
Shooting Championship in Suhl,
Germany on 17 June 2012. She won
the silver medal in the 50 metre rifle
prone womens event. She shot
around 592 and was occupied in a
three-way tie with Jaqueline Orth
of Germany and Jennifer
Messaggiero of Italy. Tejaswini was
closer to 10 shots and won silver
medal. The gold medal was won
by Jolyn Beer of Germany and Orth
won bronze medal.
INDONESIA OPEN
Ace Indian badminton player
Saina Nehwal clinched her third
Indonesia Open Super Series title
after beating Chinas Xuerui Li in
title clash in Jakarta on 17
June 2012. With this victory,
the fifth seed, Saina took the
total number of her title in the
calendar year 2012 to 3. The
Olympic-bound shuttler had
won the Thailand Open on 9
June 2012. 22-year-old Saina
had earlier claimed the
Indonesia Open title in 2009
and 2010. Prior to the final
clash of Indonesia Open
Saina had suffered defeat at the
hands of Xuerui Li on four
occassions and had registered
victory on just one occassion in year
2010.
THAILAND OPEN
Ace Indian Badminton player
Saina Nehwal clinched her 16th
career title as she defeated
Thailands Ratchanok Inathon in
the Thailand Open Grand Prix Gold
title in Bangkok on 10 June 2012.
The Thailand Open Grand Prix is
Sainas second title in the year
2012. Earlier, in April 2012 she had
SHOOTING/ARCHERY
BADMINTON
won the Swiss Open Title. The
World No. 5 Saina Nehwal is
Indias one of the biggest hopes for
the London Olympics 2012. Saina
had reached the women singles
quarterfinals round at
the Beijing Olympics in
2008, which made her
the first Indian woman
shuttler to reach the
singles quarterfinals at
the Olympics. She is also
the first Indian to win
the World Junior
B a d m i n t o n
Championships. Saina
Nehwal created a history
on 21 June 2009, when
she became the first Indian to win
a Super Series tournament, by
clinching the Indonesia Open Title
in Jakarta.
FIDE WORLD CHESS TITLE
Ace Indian chess player
Vishwanathan Anand claimed the
FIDE ( Federation Internationale
des Echec) World Chess Title for the
record fifth time. The defending
champion Anand beat Israeli
opponent Boris Gelfand in a rapid-
chess tie-breaker. Anand received
1.5 million dollar as the winning
amount, while rival Gelfand
bagged 1 million dollar. The world
title is Anands fourth in a row as
he had also claimed the title in
2007, 2008, and 2010. The 42-year-
old had claimed his maiden world
title in 2000 after beating Latvian
Alexei Shirov in Tehran. He is also
the first Asian to win the FIDE
world chess championship.
Born on 11 December 1969 in
Madras, Anands breakthrough
success in professional chess came
in 1983 when he won the Indian
Under-16 and Under-19
championships successively and
went on to win a place in the
countrys adult championships. In
1985, at the age of 16, Anand was
crowned as an International
Master, the youngest Asian player
to hold this title. In 1986 he won
the Indian adult championship,
and in 1987, at his fourth attempt,
he won the Under-20 World
Championship. Anand had won
his first world title in 2000 and
reining over the championship
since 2007.
FIDE
FIDE, the international
federation for chess, was founded
in Paris on 20 July 1924, and got
recognition by the International
Olympic Committee as an
International Sports Federation in
1999. The federation with a total of
170 members is among the biggest
sports organizations in the world.
It organizes over forty official
championships world over for
youngsters, men, women and
seniors.
VISWANATHAN ANAND ROPED AS
BRAND AMBASSADOR OF TVH
Real estate developer True
Value Homes (TVH) on 26 June
2012 signed World Chess
Champion Viswanathan Anand as
brand ambassador for all its new
projects for promoting its project
across the World. TVH will be the
first South Indian company to be
associated with Anand.
Previously, Anand was connected
with NIIT from last 13 years. TVS
has number of projects for Chennai
and Coimbatore which was
expanding Viswanathan presence
in the south. The new project of
TVH Quadrant was launched on
25 June 2012 by Ravichandran,
chairman of TVH. Quadrant is 600
crore rupees super premium 18-
storied project at Advar. It consists
of 100 units with 2.2 acres. The
project would likely to be
completed in 3 years.The project
has the separate sports facilities for
chess and other games. The
company is also planning to take
chess to schools and organise
annual tournaments. Viswanathan
Anand is the current World Chess
Champion. He was awarded by
Padma Vibhushan in 2007. He also
awarded by Rajiv Gandhi Khel
Ratna Award in 1991-92. He was
the first player in chess history
who won the World Championship
in three different formats: knockout,
tournament and match.
CHESS
SULTAN AZLAN SHAH CUP HOCKEY
TOURNAMENT
New Zealand beat Argentina
1-0 to win Sultan Azlan Shah Cup
hockey tournament at Ipoh,
Malaysia on 3 June 2012. Andy
Hayward scored the only goal for
New Zeland in the summit clash,
which prevented Argentina, the
2008 winner, to reclaim the trophy.
In a clash for the third spot and
bronze medal, India defeated Great
Britain 3-1. From Indian side
Shivendra Singh, Sandeep Singh
and Tushar Khandekar scored
goals at 42nd minute, 52nd minute
and 69th minute respectively.
Ashley Jackson struck the only goal
for the Great Britain at 35th minute
of the game. Earlier the Great Britain
had outshined the Indian squad in
their round robin league encounter.
In another clash for the fifth
position the South Korean team
defeated hosts Malaysia 3-2 to earn
the fifth position. Pakistan for the
first time in the history of the
tournament ended with the 7th
position, bottom most the in the
table. While the Fairplay Trophy
was given to Great Britain, Sardar
Singh of India was awarded with
the trophy of the Best Player of
Tournament. Kyle Pontifex of New
Zealand was chosen the Best
Goalkeeper for the tournament.
Kyle Pontifex of New Zealand was
awarded with the Man of the Final
trophy. Ashley Jackson of Great
Britain emerged the top scorer of the
tournament
FINAL TABLE
1. New Zealand
2. Argentina
3. India
4. Great Britain
5. South Korea
6. Malaysia
7. Pakistan
INDI AN HOCKEY GOALKEEPER
DSOUZA SUSPENDED FOR 1 YEAR
Indian Hockey Goalkeeper
Adrin DSouza was suspended on
HOCKEY
18 June 2012 for his anti- doping
rule violation during World Series
Hockey (WSH) tournament
2012.The sample was collected on
21 March 2012 after WSH match in
between Mumbai Marines and
Sher-E-Punjab at Jalandhar. He
was the captain of Mumbai
Marines. In the test, DSouza was
tested positive for tetrahydroc-
annabinol (THC). THC is a
metabolite of marijuana. According
to the statement of Kaithavalappil,
DSouza had smoked cigarettes
which were binded with marijuana
and he offered the same cigarettes
to the players as well. Adrian Albert
Dsouza was born 24 March 1984
in Mumbai. He is a field hockey
Indian goalkeeper. He made
international debut for Mens
National Team in January 2004
during the Sultan Azlam Shah
Hockey Tournament in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.
He also represented India at
the FIH World Cup 2006 in
Monchengladbach, Germany and
India at the Doha Asian Games
2006 in Doha, Qatar. World Series
Hockey (WSH) is an association for
hockey competition in India. It is
organized by Indian Hockey
Federation and Nimbus Sports.
There were 8 teams participated in
the tournament. WSH is the first
hockey tournament to live all the
matches online on Google video
and You Tube.
ASI AN JUNI OR WRESTLI NG
CHAMPIONSHIP 2012
Indu Chaudhary and Sakshi
Malik won gold Medals in Asian
Junior Wrestling Championship
2012 at Almaty, Kazakhstan on 13
June 2012. Indu Chaudhay and
Sakshi Malik are from Uttar
Pradesh and Haryana respectively.
The former won the gold medal in
44 Kg and latter in 63 kg.
In addition, Pooja Danda won
the silver by lifting 59kg of weight.
In addition, Lalit, Seema, Ruby
Chaudhry, Ritu and Kiran won
bronze medals by lifting the weight
of 51 kg, 67 Kg, 48 Kg, 55 Kg and 72
Kg respectively. In the freestyle
section of boys Satender, Bajrang
and Somveer won the silver medals
by lifting the weights of 120kg, 60kg
and 84kg respectively. Whereas,
the bronze medal won by Devi
Singh, Praveen Rana, Deepak and
Yudhvir by 50kg , 66kg, 74kg and
96kg respectively.
Asian Junior Wrestling
Championship 2012 held at
championship held at Kazakhstan
from 30 May 2012 to 3 June 2012.
WRESTLING
ATHLETICS
ATHLETICS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
Indian Athlete Siddhanth
Thingalaya marked an Indian
Record on 18 June 2012 at Belgium
Athletics National Championship
in Brussels. He marked the record
in 110 metre hurdles with a timing
of 13.65 seconds. At Beligum, when
he approached the ninth hurdle on
18 June 2012 he felt pain in the
hamstring. The pain placed him
behind the Adrien Deghelt of
Belgium with a timing of 13.64
seconds.
He was disqualified for the
Olympic 2012, as the Olympic
qualification mark of 13.60 seconds
and Siddhanth took 13.65 seconds
to finish the championship. He
was disqualified for Olympics
2012 qualification by five
hundredth second. After 1964, he
was the first Indian hurdler to
compete in Olympics Games.
Siddhanth Thingalaya is 21 years
old athlete from Mumbai. He
improved his own national record
of 13.77 seconds marked at Kolkata
meet in September 2011.
NATIONAL INTER-STATE SENIOR
ALTHLETIC CHAMPIONSHIP
Athletic Tintu Luka won
Greenko 52nd National Inter-State
Senior Althletic Championship on
24 June 2012 by defeating her
competitor Sinimole Paulose. She
won the championship in
womens 800 meters. She is Indias
best athletic in the two-lap race.
Tintu timing was 2m 01.36s. The
timing was near to her National
record of 1m 59.17s, which was set
in Brussels in 2010.Sinimole won
silver with the timing of 2:03.71
where S R Bindu was third in
2:09.53.
Athlete Tintu Luka is the
National Record Holder in 800
meter race. She is trained by
P.T.Usha at Usha School of
Athletics which is holded by
Olympics Gold Quest.
MOTOR RACING/F1
EUROPEAN GRAND PIX 2012
Formula One (F1) racer
Sebastian Vettel defeated Lewis
Hamilton by 1minute 38.086
seconds and won European Grand
Pix 2012, Valencia on 24 June 2012.
Vettel became the first F1 repeat
winner of the season. Vettel is from
Red Bulls team and Hamilton is
from McLaren. There were 57
numbers of Laps on the Valencia
Street Circuit in European Grand
Pix 2012. The circuit length was
5.419 km had the race distance of
308.883 km. There were 12 teams
participated in European Grand
Pix 2012. Sebastian Vettel is a
German Formula One racer. He was
born on 3 July 1987. He won the
World Championship in 2012 and
2011. Vettel also won youngest-ever
World Drivers championship
runner-up. He also secured Red
Bulls first pole position and race
win in the teams history.
MONACO GRAND PRIX
Mark Webber of Red Bull
raced ahead to emerge victorious
in the Monaco Grand Prix on 27
May 2012. He won the Monaco
Grand Prix for the second time. He
had first won the Monaco race in
2010. His second victory at Monaco
helped him to surpass Australian
icon Sir Jack Brabham on the streets
of Monaco who won the Monaco
Grand Prix once. With his second
victory Webber thus became the first
Australian to win the famous
Monaco Grand Prix twice.
Webbers victory at Monaco was
the eighth victory of his career. Also
with his victory he won Red Bull
the teams third victory in a row.
The victory enabled him to join the
likes of Niki Lauda, David
Coulthard and Juan Manuel
Fangio, all of who have two
Monaco Grand Prix victory to their
credit. Germanys Nico Rosberg
finished second for Mercedes,
while Ferraris Fernando Alonso
was third. Mark Webber made his
debut in 2002. He had won the first
FI race in 2006. In the British Grand
Prix 2011, Webber won the
Hawthorn Memorial Trophy for
2010.
TABLE TENNIS
BRAZIL OPEN TABLE TENNIS
Harmeet Desai won Under- 21
Mens Final Brazil Open Table
Tennis on 17 June 2012. He had
defeated Belgian Cedric Nuytin by
4-2 and won gold medal. He
became first Indian to achieve such
an accomplishment. Desai won by
11-3, 6-11, 11-6, 11-9, 5-11, 11-6.
Previously, the fourth seed had
defeated his compatriot Soumyajit
Ghosh by 10-12, 11-8, 6-11, 11-1, 11-
4, 11-4 in the
s e mi - f i na l .
After that he
was competed
with with
Nuytin. Desai
was up to his
rival tricks in
the decider
and won the
title with three
straight points.
GOLF
MEMORIAL TOURNAMENT
Former world no. 1 golfer Tiger
Woods defeated Spencer Levin and
Rory Sabbatini to win his 73rd PGA
Tour title by two shots at the
Memorial tournament on 4 June
2012. The Memorial tournament
victory is Woods second PGA Tour
victory in the current season. Now
the ace golfer will be seen
competing in the US Open from 14-
17 June 2012. Born on 30 December
1975, Woods started his
professional golf career in 1996. His
first major victory came in 1997
when he claimed the 1997 Masters
Tournament. He first reached the
top of the world rankings in June
1997. Woods present world
ranking is 4. Considered to be the
all time great of golf, he has been
awarded PGA Player of the Year a
record ten times.
Awards and Prizes
WORLD FOOD PRIZE 2012
Daniel Hillel won World Food
Prize 2012 on 13 June 2012. He is a
scientist from Israel. The work and
motivation of Daniel Hillel built the
bridge between the divisions and
to promote peace and
understanding in the Middle East
by advancing a breakthrough
achievement. His work is relevant
for agriculture-dominated
economies. He applied the method
of micro-irrigation, which
maximizes the efficiency of water
usage in agriculture. World Food
Prize is an international award.
This award
recognizes the
importance of
water for
a g r i c u l t u r a l
purposes.
Dr. Hillel will
be formally
presented with the
cash prize of
250000 dollar
award in October
2012 at United
States. This award
was recognized by
Norman Borlaug
in 1987. This
award indicates to that person who
is pioneer in radical innovative
way of bringing water to crops in
arid and dry-land regions. Norman
Borlaug is a Nobal Prize winner
and champion in Green
Revolution. The World Food Prize
award is chaired by M.S.
Swaminathan. He is Indian
agricultural scientist Professor and
the first World Food Prize laureate.
Norman Ernest Borlaug was an
American agronomist,
humanitarian and also known as
the the father of the Green
Revolution. He won Padma
Vibhushan which is the Indias
second highest civilian honour.
WI SDEN INDI A OUTSTANDI NG
ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Indias Batting great Sachin
Tendulkar was conferred upon the
Wisden India Outstanding
Achievement award for completing
a century of 100 international
hundreds, in Dubai on 11 June
2012. The legendary batsman was
presented a trophy at an event
organised by FidelisWorld. The
trophy was made from crystal, it
resembles a cricket ball resting on
the open pages of a book.
Tendulakar achieved the
incredible feat while playing
against Bangladesh in the Asia
Cup in March 2012. The batting
genius has total 49 One-Day
International centuries and 51 Test
centuries to his credit. Tendulkar,
while receiving the award spoke on
range of
aspects of his
career, like his
f a v o u r i t e
innings, the
m a t c h -
w i n n i n g
fourth innings
h u n d r e d
a g a i n s t
England at
Chennai in
D e c e mb e r
2008, balancing play and personal
life, and the influence that his late
father had in shaping his career.
ONDAATJE PRIZE 2012
Rahul Bhattacharya, the Delhi-
based author, on 29 May 2012 won
the prestigious Ondaatje Prize 2012
for his book The Sly Company of
People Who Care. He is the first
Indian author to have received the
award. Bhattacharya was also
conferred with the Hindu Literary
Prize for Best Fiction, 2011 for the
same book. The 10000 pounds
award is conferred by the Royal
Society of Literature every year to
recognize a work of fiction, non-
fiction or poetry which evokes the
spirit of a place. The award is
presented to the author who is a
citizen of or who has been resident
in the Commonwealth or Ireland.
The other authors whose work
were shortlisted for the prize
include Julia Blackburns Thin
Paths, Teju Coles Open City,
Paul Farley and Michael Symmons
Roberts Edgelands, Olivia
Laings To the River and Tim
Robinsons Connemara.
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In the News
RAJA PARVEZ ASHRAF
Raja Parvez Ashraf, the senior
Pakistan Peoples Party leader, was
appointed the 17th Prime Minister
of Pakistan on 22 June 2012. In a
poll held in the Pakistans
National Assembly to elect new
Prime Minister, Raja received 211
votes of the total 342 votes while
the Opposition PML (N) candidate,
Sardar Mehtab Abbasi, bagged
only 89 votes. Pakistan President
Asif Ali Zardari administered oath
to the new Prime Ministerat in a
special oath taking ceremony held
at the Presidency at Islamabad in
Pakistan. Ashraf was elected as the
Prime Minister following the
Supreme Courts verdict to debar
Yousaf Raza Gilani from his office
on 19 June 2012 in a contempt of
court case.
Born on 26 December 1950, in
Sanghar town in Sindh province,
Ashraf completed his higher
education from Sindh University in
Pakistan in 1970. A successful real
estate businessman Ashraf is
considered as a key PPP leader in
the Rawalpindi region. He was
twice elected to the National
Assembly of Pakistan from Gujar
Khan constituency of Rawalpindi
District. Before being elected as the
Prime Minister of the country, he
served as the federal minister for
water and power, and information
and technology in the cabinet
headed by former prime minister
Yousuf Raza Gilani.
MOHAMMED MORSI
Mohammed Morsi won 2012
Presidential Election of Egypt on 24
June 2012. He was the candidate
from Muslim Brotherhood
APPOINTED
(Freedom and Justice Party).
Mohammed Morsi defeated
Ahmed Shafiq by 3.4% of votes.
Mohammed Morsi got 51.7 per cent
of votes whereas, Ahmed Shafiq got
48.3 per cent of votes. The victory
of Mohammed Morsi is set to vibrate
West Asia and North Africa, where
Libya is heading for elections in
next month and the moderate
Islamists are exemplifying
Turkeys Justice and Development
Party. Mohammed Morsi is 60 years
old. He is a trained American
engineer and former lawmaker. He
is the first Islamist elected as the
head of an Arab state. He became
the fifth president of Egypt and the
first president from outside the
military.
VEERAVALLI SUNDARAM SAMPATH
President Pratibha Patil
appointed senior-most Election
Commissioner Veeravalli
Sundaram Sampath as the 18th
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC)
of India. He replaced S.Y. Quraishi
on the constitutional position,
whose term as the CEC is coming
to an end on 10 June 2012. Born at
Vellore in Tamil Nadu on 16
January 1950, VS Sampath joined
the elite Indian Administrative
Service in 1973 as the officer of
Andhra Pradesh cadre. He took
over as Election Commissioner on
21 April 2009. He will carry out his
term till 16 January 2015. Election
Commissioner is appointed either
for six years in the Commission or
till the age of 65, whichever comes
earlier. H.S. Brahma is the other
E l e c t i o n
Commissioner.
Chief Election
Commissioner is
the head of the
t hree- member
e l e c t i o n
c o mmi s s i o n ,
which is a
const i t ut i onal
entity responsible
for conducting
free and fairs elections in the
country. Article 324 of the Indian
constitution provides for the
institution of Election Commission
of India. The commission was set
up on 25 January 1950 with an aim
to make electoral process in the
worlds largest democracy more
transparent and free from any
external interference. Sukumar Sen
was the first Election
Commissioner of India.
The Election Commission
was originally a one-member body
when it started functioning but the
number was later expanded to 3 on
16 October 1989. But the other two
members in the body had a very
short tenure as they left the office
on 1 January 1990. Subsequently,
on 1 October 1993 two additional
Election Commissioners were
appointed. The concept of multi-
member Commission has been in
operation since then, with decision
making power by majority vote. The
three-member body is headed by the
Chief Election Commissioner who
is appointed by the President of
India. The Chief Election
Commissioner along with two
other Election Commissioners
enjoy the official status, salary and
perks equivalent to judges of the
Supreme Court of India. The Chief
Election Commissioner can be
removed only through
impeachment by the Parliament. In
order of precedence the Chief
Election Commissioner stands at
9th position along with the judges
of the Supreme Court of India,
Comptroller and Auditor General
of India, Chief Election
Commissioner of India , Chairman
of Union Public Service
Commission.
VICE ADMIRAL DK JOSHI
Government of India on 5 June
2012 nominated Vice Admiral
Devender Kumar Joshi as the new
Navy chief. Joshi will assume the
charge after Admiral Nirmal Verma
retires on 31
August 2012.
Joshi, 58 is
currently the
Flag Officer
Commanding-
in-Chief of the
W e s t e r n
Naval Command, the Indian
Navys sword arm. DK Joshi has
been awarded the Param Vishist
Seva Medal, the Ati Vishist Seva
medal, Yudh Seva Medal, Nau
Sena Medal and the Vishist Seva
Medal.
Born on 4 July 1954, Joshi
joined Indian Navy on 1 April
1974. In a career spanning nearly
40 years, Joshi served the Indian
Navy in various capacities. Prior
to his current appointment, Joshi
served as the navys deputy chief,
Commander-in-Chief of the
Andaman and Nicobar Command
and Chief of the Integrated Defence
Staff. A graduate of the prestigious
US Naval War College and an
alumnus of Mumbis College of
Naval Warfare, and New Delhis
National Defence College, Joshi
also served as defence advisor in
the Indian High Commission in
Singapore 1996-99.
GENERAL BIKRAM SINGH
General Bikram Singh, a
veteran infantry officer, assumed
the charge as the 25th Chief of the
Indian Army. He succeeded
General V K Singh whose 26-
month tenure came to end on 31
May 2012. Bikram Singh, 59, will
remain at the top position for next
two years and three months. Prior
to his appointment to the top post,
General Bikram served as
commanding officer of the Eastern
Army Command. He is the second
Sikh to reach the top notch position,
the first having been General JJ
Singh. In his 40-year-long
illustrious career with the Indian
army, General Bikram Singh held a
number of vital positions in
counter insurgency areas as the
Corps Commander of Srinagar-
based 15 Corps and Akhnoor-
based 10 Division as Major
General.
]
The officer joined the Sikh
Light Infantry regiment on 31
March 1972 after attending the
prestigious Indian
MilitaryAcademy (IMA). At the
IMA, he held the appointment of
battalion cadet adjutant and was
awarded the Jammu and Kashmir
Rifles gold medal for tactics and
leadership and the Shriganesh
Trophy. The officer was in charge
of media briefing during the Kargil
war. At Military Operations
Directorate in Kargil he was
assigned with the task to brief the
media about the developments
taking place in the war. Singh
attended the US Army War College
in Pennsylvania and has served
with the United Nations peace
force in Central America and as the
deputy force commander and GOC
of Eastern Division in the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
SHEKHAR BASU
Shekhar Basu was appointed
as the Director of Bhabha Atomic
Research Centre (BARC) on 19 June
2012. Basu, who earlier served as
the Chief Executive of Nuclear
Recycle Board of the Bhabha
Atomic Research Centre (BARC),
Trombay succeeded Ratan Kumar
Sinha on the top position. Sinha
was appointed as the Chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission on
30 April 2012. 59-year-old Basu, an
engineering graduate from Victoria
Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI),
joined BARC Training School in
1974.
During his 38-year service at
BARC, Basu served in various
capacities including the Chief
Executive of Nuclear Recycle
Board. Basu was the Project
Director of the Plutonium
Recycling Project at Kalpakkam,
which built Indias first indigenous
Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR)
which is powered by enriched
uranium.
JUSTICE MADAN BHIMARAO LOKUR
Justice Madan Bhimarao
Lokur took the oath as the Supreme
Court judge on 4 June 2012. Prior
to his elevation to the apex court he
was serving as the chief justice of
the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
The joining of Justice Lokur has
taken the total number of the apex
court judge to 26, which is still five
short of the total strength of 31
judges. Supreme Court Chief Justice
S.H. Kapadia administered the
oath to Justice Lokur. This is the first
time in the history of the apex court
that a judge has sworn in during
the summer vacation.
Born on 31 December 1953,
Justice Lokur became Additional
Judge of Delhi High Court on 19
February 1999 and Permanent
Judge of the high court on 5 July
1999. He was appointed as Chief
Justice of Guahati High Court on
24 June 2010. He took over as chief
justice of the Andhra Pradesh High
Court on 15 November 2011. In one
of his landmark verdicts as chief
justice of the Andhra Pradesh High
Court, Justice Lokur had voided the
Union governments decision to
provide 4.5 percent reservation in
educational institutions and
government jobs for Muslims
within the existing reservation
quota.
NEERAJ KUMAR
The Union Home Ministry
appointed Neeraj Kumar, the 1976-
batch Indian Police Service (IPS)
officer, as the 18th Commissioner
of Delhi Police on 28 June 2012.
Neeraj Kumar succeeded B K
Gupta who got his tenure as the
Delhi Police Commissioner
completed on 30 June 2012. Kumar,
who was earlier serving as the
Director General of Tihar Jail,
assumed the new charge on 1 July
2012. An AGMUT (Arunachal-Goa-
Mizoram and other Union
Territories) cadre IPS officer, Kumar
joined the coveted Indian Police
Service in 1976. He completed his
graduation and post-graduation
from St Stephens College in Delhi.
The Government of India in
1966 constituted the Delhi Police
Commission headed by Justice
G.D.Khosla. The commission in its
report recommended the
introduction of Police
Commissioner System, which was
finally adopted by the government
from 1 July 1978. In compliance
with the recommendations made by
Khosla Commission the Delhi
Police was also reorganized in four
Police districts, namely, North,
Central, South and New Delhi. At
present, there are 3 ranges, 9
districts and 180 police stations in
Delhi. Delhi Police with its present
strength of above 76000 personnel
is perhaps the largest metropolitan
police in the world, larger than
London, Paris, New York and
Tokyo.
DEATH
MEHDI HASSAN
Pakistani ghazal maestro
Mehdi Hassan passed away in
Karachi on 13 June 2012 following
a prolonged illness. The legendary
ghazal singer had not been well for
last several years. He was suffering
from suffering from lung, chest and
urinary tract ailments.
Born into a family of
traditional musicians on
18 July 1927 in Luna in
Rajasthan, Mehdi Hassan
had migrated to Pakistan
with his family in 1947 at
the time of partition.
Belonging from the
Kalawant clan of
traditional classical
musicians, he
represented the 18th
generation of the
family. He had been
presented with
numerous honours including
Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, Pride of
Performance and Hilal-e-Imtiaz by
the Government of Pakistan, Saigal
Award in India and Gorkha
Dakshina Bahu by the Government
of Nepal.
Mehdi Hassan learnt
dhrupad and kheyal from his
father Ustad Azeem Khan and
uncle Ustad Ismail Khan who were
both renowned Dhrupad singers.
Hassan started to perform at a
young age of eight and sang in
more than 325 films. He got his first
opportunity to sing on Radio
Pakistan in 1957. From there he
earned a name for him within the
musical fraternity. Once dubbed as
the voice of God by Lata
Mangeshkar, Hassan had a huge
fan following both in India and
Pakistan. The singer who was also
fondly called the Shehenshahe
Ghazal by his fans, gave his voice
to nearly 5000 songs including film
songs, ghazals, thumri, dadra etc.
His most popular film numbers
came in the movies like Dard,
Bharosa, Jab Jab Phool Khile,
Insaaf Aur Qanoon, Daman Aur
Chingari and Aaina. Aaj tu ghair
sahi from the film Dahleez was his
last big hit.
RADHA VINOD RAJU
Radha Vinod Raju, the
founding director of National
Investigation Agency (NIA) died at
the age of 62 on 21 June 2012. Raju
was also a key member of the
special investigation team which
investigated the assassination of
former Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi. Born in Kochi on 27 July
1949 Raju started his career as an
officer in the Bank of India.
Subsequently, in 1975, he joined the
J&K cadre of Indian Police Service.
In his long illustrious career as an
IPS officer, Raju served on various
top positions such as, senior
superintendent of police of Jammu
district, deputy inspector general of
South Kashmir Range and
inspector general of Jammu.
Raju also headed the special
investigation team (SIT) which
probed the assassination of former
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi in May 1991. The SIT
headed by him, held LTTE culprit
of the assassination of Rajiv
Gandhi. Raju was awarded with
numerous medals and awards
during his service with the IPS.
Most coveted of the awards that he
received includes the Police Medal
for Meritorious Service in 1992, the
Presidents Police Medal for
Distinguished Service in 1999, a
Director-Generals Commendation
Certificate in January 2000 and the
Sher-e-Kashmir Medal for
Meritorious Services in 2003.
NATIONAL INVESTIGATION AGENCY
(NIA)
National Investigation
Agency (NIA), the counter terrorism
law enforcement agency of India,
was founded on 31 December
2008. The agency was founded
amidst the growing incidents of
terror attacks in India. The dreadful
Mumbai terror attack of 26
November 2011, prompted the
Government of India to take some
concrete measure to prevent any
such incident in the future. The
government, consequently,
proposed to enact a legislation, to
set up the NIA. The agency is
entirely dedicated to inspect the
acts of terror in the country. Senior
IPS officer SC Sinha is the present
Director General of NIA.
DIPANKAR MUKHERJEE
Dipankar Mukherjee,
National Secretary of Centre of
Indian Trade Union (CITU), passed
away on 18 June 2012 in New Delhi
at the age of 69. Dipankar
Mukherjee was born in June 1943
at Calcutta in West Bengal. A
brilliant student throughout his
student life, he graduated in
electrical engineering from Banaras
Hindu University and started his
career as an engineer with BHEL
in Bhopal. He also held high
position in Hindustan Fertiliser
Corporation and Haldia Fertilisers.
Mukharjee joined CITU as its full
time member in 1991 and actively
participated in trade union
movement since then. He was
elected National Secretary of CITU
in 2003 and represented CITU in
various forums. He was CITU
representative in Central Board of
Trustees of Employees Provident
Fund Organisation till his demise.
He was elected to the Rajya Sabha,
the upper house of the Indian
Parliament, in April 1994 from West
Bengal as a CPI(M) member. During
his 12-year stint as the Rajya Sabha
member, Mukharjee played a vital
role in intervening effectively on all
crucial economic and industrial
policy related issues.
Centre of Indian Trade Union
(CITU) is one of Indias largest
associations of workers. Founded
in 1970, the union is politically
associated with the Communist
Party of India (Marxist).
B.K.ROY BURMAN
B.K.Roy Burman passed away
on 26 June 2012. He was
anthropologist and social scientist.
B.K. Roy was born in Bangladesh
in the year 1922. He served as
Director of the Tribal Research
Institute. He was the former visiting
faculty of Jawaharlal Nehru
University and Centre for the Study
of Developing Societies. He was the
Professor at Visva-Bharati
University. He was an ex-officio
Director of the Council of Social
Development. Prof. Burman served
on Special Duty . He was the head
of the Social Studies Division of the
Registrar- General of India. He
chaired the Union Planning
Commissions Study Group on
Land Holding Systems of Tribals
and the Union Home Ministrys
Committee on Forest and Tribals
Backward Classes Unit.
ABID HUSSAIN
Former Indian ambassador to
US Abid Hussain passed away at
the age of 85 in London on 21 June
2012. Hussain, a member of Indian
Administrative Service (IAS), was
one of those very few officers who
served the Indian Foreign Service
despite not being the member of the
coveted service. In his illustrious
career with the Indian
Administrative Service, Hussain
served in various capacities such
as the Secretary of Ministry of
Heavy Industries, Commerce
Secretary and Chairman IIFT. In
1985, he was appointed the
Member of Planning Commission
of India. Subsequently, he served as
Ambassador to the US between
as the chairman of numerous
international, national and State-
level committees. He was
associated with non-government
organizations and worked for the
Scheduled Tribes. In addition, he
had worked as the chairman of the
Futorology Commission of the
International Union of
Anthropological and Ethnological
Sciences. In addition, he was the
founder-president of the Network
of Practicing Anthropologists and
he had served as Deputy Registrar-
General of the Census and Officer
1990 and 1992. In 1988, Hussain
was awarded with Padma
Bhushan, the third highest civilian
award given by the Indian
Government. Hussain in his long
standing career oversaw several
important assignments. Some of his
notable assignments include, the
Member of International Panel on
Democracy & Development of
UNESCO, Special Rapporteur to
UN on Freedom of Opinion and
Expression for 9 years, Member of
the Constitution Review
Commission of India, Member of the
Prasar Bharati Board, Member of
the Council on Foreign Relations,
New York and U.N Adviser on
Turkey on Community
Development.
TEOFILO STEVENSON
Legendary Cuban Boxer
Teofilo Stevenson died of heart
attack on 13 June 2012 at the age of
60. An amateur boxer he never
turned professional in his 14-year
long career. Stevenson, who won
his first gold at the 1972 Munich
Games, and went on to win two
more golds at the 1976 Montreal
and 1980 Moscow Games, ruled
the game for nearly 14 years. He
was the first fighter to win the
Olympic gold medal in the same
division three times. Stevenson was
denied a chance of a fourth medal
after Cuba joined
the Soviet boycott of
the 1984 Los
Angeles Games.
The legendary
boxer, who quit the
game in 1986, had
emerged victorious
in a record 302
bouts out of 321
that he played.
Subsequently, he
served as a trainer
and official with
Cuban boxing
f e d e r a t i o n
mentoring Felix
Savon, who also
like his trainer went
on to win three Olympic golds
(1992, 1996, 2000). A fervent patriot,
Stevenson refused to contest a
highly lucrative bout against then-
world heavyweight champion
Muhammad Ali after the 1976
Montreal Games. He was offered 1
million dollar for that bout, but he
did not give up his amateur status.
ACCUSED/RESIGNED/CONTROVERSY
PRANAB MUKHERJEE
Pranab Mukherjee, who has
been nominated the ruling
Congress Party candidate for the
Presidential Elections 2012,
resigned as the Union Finance
Minister on 26 June 2012.
Mukherjee tendered his
resignation to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh. A veteran
Congress party leader, Mukherjee
was appointed the Union Finance
Minister on 24 January 2009,
during the UPA I government. The
victory of UPA in 2009 general
elections saw him again occupying
the finance portfolio in the UPA II
Government. Mukherjee was first
appointed as the Finance minister
of India during the Indira Gandhi
government in 1982 and he got his
maiden annual budget presented
in the Parliament in 1982-83.
Mukherjee was first elected to the
Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the
Indian Parliament in 1969 from
West Bengal. He was re-elected in
1975, 1981, 1993 and 1999. His first
stint as the Union Minister started
in 1973, when he was appointed
the Union Deputy Minister for
Industrial Development in the
Indira Gandhi government. He was
first elected to the Loksabha, the
lower house of the Indian
Parliament, in 2004 from Jangipur
constituency in West Bengal.
Mukherjee served in various
capacities under three different
Prime Ministers including Indira
Gandhi, PV Narsimha Rao and
Manmohan Singh. In a
Parliamentary career spanning
more than four decades, Mukherjee
held various key positions such as
the Union Minister of External
Affairs and Union Minister of
Defence in various Congress
governments. As the Deputy
Chairman of Planning
Commission during PV Narsimha
Rao government from 24 June 1991
to 15 May 1996, he was
instrumental in the growth of
Indian economy in the post
economic reform era. A key figure
of the Congress led UPA
government, Mukherjee was
heading nearly a dozen
Empowered Group of Ministers
(EGoM) on various crucial issues
such as telecom, divestment, food
security, water issues, gas pricing
and large power projects, among
others. His candidature for the
Presidential Elections also made
him to quit as the head of
numerous EGoM.
YUSUF RAZA GILANI
Pakistan on 19 June 2012
disqualified Yusuf Raza Gilani,
Pakistans 16th Prime Minister,
from his office. The court also held
him ineligible to be the member of
National Assembly, the lower
house of the Pakistans Majlis-e-
Shoora (Parliament). Gilani was
convicted for violating the article
63(1) (g) (contempt of court) of the
President Asif Ali Zardari.
Born on 9 June 1952, Yusuf
Raza Gilani, had been the member
of Pakistans National Assembly
from Multan-IV constituency since
1988. In 2008 general elections he
led Pakistan People Party (PPP) to
a victory, to took over as the 16th
Prime Minister of the Islamic
Republic of Pakistan. Gilani
obtained his Bachelor in
Journalism in 1970 followed by a
Masters in Political Journalism
from the University of the Punjab
in 1976. Subsequently he joined
politics in 1978 under the military
government of General Zia-ul-Haq.
His father Makhdoom Alamdar
Hussain Gilani was a former
politician who played a significant
role in the Pakistan Movement.
Gilani, who was initially
associated with the Pakistan
Muslim League (PML), was first
elected to the Parliament in the non-
party elections of 1985, and was
appointed minister for housing
and works, and later railways. But,
political differences with the PML
leadership soon prompted him to
join the PPP. Gilani also served
prison for five years during the rule
of former President Pervez
Musharraf after being convicted by
a military-controlled anti-
corruption agency for misusing his
authority when he was the Speaker
of the Parliament from 1993 to 1997.
VRS NATARAJAN
India on 11 June 2012 suspended
VRS Natarajan, the head of the
state-run defence enterprise Bharat
Earth Movers Limited (BEML). The
governments move came in the
wake of CBIs recommendations to
remove him from his position given
his role in the controversial Tatra
truck deal. The investigating
agency had accused Natarajan of
trying to influence the
investigation against him. The
Bangalore based BEML supplies
Tatra trucks to the Army. Former
Army Chief VK Singh had accused
that he was offered a 14 crore rupees
kickback to approve the purchase
of 600 sub-standard Tatara trucks
for the Army. The government had
ordered a CBI inquiry in the Army
Chiefs allegations. The CBI is
investigating whether the defence
public sector unit violated
guidelines in buying and
supplying the trucks to the Army.
Natarajan, as the head of the
BEML had maintained that the
Army Chiefs assessment of the
trucks was grossly wrong. The
legal cell of the Criminal
Investigations Department in
Hyderabad had also recommended
the prosecution of Natarajan for
cheating, criminal breach of trust,
and falsification of accounts in the
same case.
VIRBHADRA SINGH
Union Minister Virbhadra
Singh resigned on Tuesday in the
wake of a Himachal Pradesh court
framing corruption charges against
him. He is the third minister in the
UPA-II to quit on similar grounds.
A five-time Chief Minister of
Himachal Pradesh, the 78-year-old
Mr. Singh, the Union Minister for
Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises, met Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh at his residence
before announcing his resignation.
The President of India, as advised
by the Prime Minister, has accepted
the resignation of Virbhadra Singh
from the Union Council of
Ministers, with immediate effect,
the Rashtrapati Bhavan
spokesperson said.
Mr. Singhs decision came a
day after the Himachal court
framed charges of corruption and
criminal misconduct against him
and his wife Pratibha Singh in a
23-year-old case, saying there was
sufficient evidence to proceed
against them.
DANISH KANERIA
Pakistani Cricket player
Danish Kaneria was banned by
England and Wales Cricket Board
on 21 June 2012. He was given a
lifetime ban because he was found
guilty for corruption.
He is the third Pakistani
player who is banned because of
match fixing. In addition, in the
year 2000 Salim Malik and Ata-ur-
rehman were banned for lifetime
from Cricket because of match-
fixing. Moreover, Salman Butt,
Mohammad Aamer and
Mohammad Asif were banned by
the International Cricket Council
and jailed by the court of United
Kingdom in the year 2010 for fixing
specific parts of a Test match.
Danish Kaneria is 31 years old. He
took 261 wickets in 61 Tests for
Pakistan. He had taken 15 wickets
in 18 one-day internationals.
VARIOUS
ANJANI JAIN
The Yale School of
Management on 18 June
2012announced the appointment
of Indian American professor
Anjani Jain as senior associate
dean for the full-time MBA
programme as part of the schools
expansion programme. He will
contribute to the Yale SOM
curriculum as a senior lecturer.
Anjani Jain a graduate from the
Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad will join Yale on 1 July
2012. He holds a PhD. from the
University of California, Los
Angeles, Graduate School of
Management. Jain spent the last 26
years at Wharton and served as as
vice dean of its full-time MBA
programme for ten years. He also
worked in the capacity of the vice
dean of the MBA programme for
executives. He in the past served in
multiple leadership roles at the
Wharton School of the, University
of Pennsylvania. He taught a range
of courses and conducted
important research in production
and operations management. Jain
was recognized for his
contributions to African-American
students with the Howard E.
Mitchell Award. Within the scope
of a senior associate dean for the
full-time MBA programme, Jain
will focus on Yales flagship full-
time MBA programme. He will be
expected to assume lead
responsibility for admissions,
career development, and student
and academic services. The Yale
School of Management introduced
a Master of Advanced Management
programme and participated in the
launch of the Global Network for
Advanced Management, a
collective effort by 21 international
business schools to understand the
challenges posed by complex
global markets.
RAO PAPINENI
Rao Papineni got the
approval for patent Application for
cancer treatment on 19 June 2012.
He is a nanotechnology scientist.
The title of the patent is High
Capacity Non-Viral Vectors. It will
help the nano particles to allow the
drug to be released inside the
diseased cell. This will improve the
function of the drug. Dr. Papineni
and Alan Pollack is the chairman
of the Department of Radiation
Oncology, University of Miami. In
addition, Dr. Papineni is exploring
the ability of nano-particles
targeted as a drug carrier. Dr.
Papineni is a chief scientist and
senior principal investigator in
medical applications of
nanotechnology at Carestream
Health, Inc USA.
SHAKEEL AFRIDI
Shakeel Afridi, the man
behind the killing of Al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden in
Abottabad in Pakistan on 2 May
2011 sentenced to 33 years
imprisonment under the colonial
vintage Frontier Crimes Regulation
(FCR) on 23 May 2012. Shakeel
Afridi, had helped the CIA collect
the DNA sample of bin Laden by
conducting a fake vaccination drive
in the Abbottabad area.
The sample helped the the U.S.
intelligence agency to confirm his
presence in the fortified house.
Afridi was produced before a four-
member tribal court and sentenced
to 33 years of imprisonment. A
penalty of 320000 Pakistani Rupees
was also imposed on the doctor. He
was charged with high treason
after he was picked up by the ISI
soon after the Abbottabad raid.
Earlier this year, senior U.S.
administration officials confirmed
that he had helped them track
down bin Laden and called for his
release.
NIK WALLENDA
American Stuntman Nik
Wallenda became the first person
to walk across Niagara Falls on a
tightrope on 15 June 2012.
Wallenda took more than 25
minutes to complete his 1800-feet
long precarious journey. No person
in the past 100 years has
accomplished this daredevilry act.
Wallenda started the walk from the
U.S. side of the falls and finished it
to the Canadian side. Born at
Florida in US on 24 January 1979
Wallenda describes himself as an
aerialist, high wire artist, acrobat
and daredevil.
The six-time Guinness World
Record holder Wallenda has to his
credit the world record for the
longest distance and greatest
height ever travelled by bicycle on
a high wire, the record which he
created during a stunt in New
Jersey in year 2008. Stunts of any
sort were legally prohibited on
Niagara Falls for more than 100
years. Nik Wallenda had to
wrangled with the US and
Canadian authorities for two years
to get the permission to perform the
daredevil task.
On 23 September 2011, New
York Governor Andrew Cuomo
signed a bill giving Nik Wallenda
final permission to cross Niagra
Falls on a tightrope.
SACHIN TENDULKAR
Legendary Indian cricketer
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar sworn
in as the member of the Rajya
Sabha, the upper house of the
Parliament on 4 June 2012. Sachin
along with hindi film actress
Rekha and business woman Anu
Aga was nominated by the
President of India as Rajya Sabha
MP on 27 April 2012. Since
Parliament is not in session, Sachin
was administered the oath in the
chamber of the Rajya Sabha
chairman Hamid Ansari. The Vice
President administered him the
oath. He took oath in Hindi. Sachin,
39, is the first active cricketer who
has been nominated to Rajya Sabha
for 6-year term. The President of
India under article 80 of the Indian
constitution nominates 12
members belonging from the
various fields like art, literature,
business, sports to the 250-member
Rajya Sabha.
India and China agreed to
increase their defense and security
dialogue and work to take steps to
ensure that the two countries
achieve a 100 billion dollars trade
target by 2015. The decision was
taken on the sidelines of the Ri0+
20 summit at Rio de Janeiro. India
also raised the border issue during
the talks. India and China agreed
that they would continue political
dialogue at the political level. India
and China also decided that the
special representatives would
work for preparing the joint record
of their work so far, which was
already announced in January
2012 and give directions for the
future co-ordination between the
two countries. The special
representatives of India and China
would submit a report on the
developments so far by January
2013. India would setup inter-
ministerial group on its side while
China would have an official team
that would periodically exchange
views on maritime issues relating
to trade and security.
It was trade that helped China
and India to take their political-
military relationships out of woods
beginning with late eighties and
enabled them to keep sweeping
tensions under the friendship rug.
In the process, the phenomenon
debunked the traditional logic of
trade following the flag and the
primacy of politics in bilateral and
international relations. However,
recently there have been frictions
derailing the entire progress in the
Sino Indian relations.
The return of Hong Kong to
China has strengthened the China
link of Indias business community,
many of whom have lived and
thrived in Hong Kong for over one
hundred years. Juxtaposed with
Chinas emerging private
enterprises, these new trends have
provided new momentum for
China-India trade relations. It is
especially this economic
engagement between their non-
state sectors that has now begun to
provide steam to the China-India
political rapprochement,
promising to gradually emerge as
an important force in moulding the
nature and magnitude of China-
India trade relations. Nevertheless,
given the multifaceted challenges
for their economic engagement, the
hope lies in the two being able to
continuously innovative to
strengthen and evolve their
bilateral trade on the basis of
mutual understanding and mutual
confidence.
On the question of boundary
dispute between the two countries,
the two leaders said the Special
Representatives of India and China
have been asked to prepare details
of the joint work done so far. China
also agreed to look into the issue
balance of trade which is heavily
in its favour. The Prime Minister
raised the issue of Indian trade
deficit and the Chinese agreed to
work with India in addressing the
fact that India has a large trade
deficit. They mentioned in fact
specifically that they are arranging
trade missions to India to improve
access of Indian exports into the
Chinese market. They are
organizing commodity fairs. And
they noted for example one of the
changes which has happened
recently is that rice exports from
India to China will now be
commencing,Mathai told the
representatives of Indian media
organisations covering the Rio+20
summits.
Now, Indian exporters can
soon begin sending basmati rice to
China after both countries agree on
a mutually satisfactory quarantine
protocol. China has already
cleared Indian exports of basmati
rice following six-year process
during which many hurdles that
bar the entry of Indian rice into the
Chinese market were overcome.
Negotiations on the issue of rice
exports were on since 2006, when
President Hu Jintao visited India.
Finally, it was given a concrete
shape during Hus visit to New
Delhi for the BRICS summit in
March.
China and India today
represent Asias two largest and
most dynamic societies which are
emerging as new trend setters in
international relations. Especially,
with their annual GDP growth rates
standing respectively at 9.1% and
8.5% for 2003 and at 9.5% and 6.9%
for 2004, China and India have
since come to be recognised as the
fastest growing economies.
According to World Bank
estimates, and assessed on the
basis of purchasing power parity,
China and India have already
become respectively the second and
fourth largest economies of the
world surpassing developed
countries. This boom in trade has
also introduced new trends. The
two states are no longer only
recipients on foreign direct
investment but have entered into a
new phase of being investors, both
mutually as in other regions. In this
new context, the increasing deficit
in the energy sector and the
competition to capture new
markets present major challenges
to sustaining this boom in their
bilateral trade.
Viewed in the context of South
Asia, Chinas trade with India have
witnessed impressive increases
defying all suspicions about
Chinas special relationship with
Pakistan or Chinas encirclement
of India. To highlight some other
strong fundamentals that promise
to sustain their current trade boom,
while China continues to enjoy a
huge favorable balance of trade vis-
-vis most other smaller states of
the South Asian region, it is only
the China-India trade that has
remained to be Chinas most
balanced trade in South Asia and
often the balance has been in favor
of India. This clearly reflects strong
mutual stakes which promise to
sustain this trade boom at least in
the short term. Indeed, the two
seem to be becoming increasingly
relaxed about their bilateral ties
and are now thinking of building
joint strategies towards their
regional and global initiatives. No-
one today talks of a China-India
clash in South-East Asia where
both have built flourishing
engagement without any mutual
friction or skepticism. While so far
they have not allowed this to
become a major stumbling block yet
their intensifying search for energy
sources abroad is lately seen as one
area that could post a serious
challenge for their economic
engagement.
From the global perspective,
China and India today represent
two unique new players
presenting an extraordinary
combination of a very large GDP
and still with significant poverty
and pockets of unrest and a very
low per capita income and living
standards. This unique
combination raises several
questions about their becoming
major drivers in international
economic trends. However, in the
politico-strategic sphere, their
recent economic success has
resulted in both seeking an
expanded space in regional as well
as international decision-making,
something that is becoming a
matter for worldwide concern.
Chinas foreign trade stood at US $
3.64 trillion for 2011. Indias foreign
trade, by comparison, reached only
about US $ 1 trillion for 2011.
Indias growing trade deficit
with Chinaan estimated $27
billion in 2011has become a
source of anguish in Indian policy
circles. Bilateral trade between the
two emerging giants grew to $73
billion in 2011, up from $63 billion
in 2010 and less than $3 billion in
2000. The Indian side, though, is
becoming increasingly alarmed
over the growing trade balance in
Chinas favor, which amounted to
a Chinese surplus of $23.9 billion
last year. In December, Indias
National Security Council
Secretariat, the apex agency
responsible for economic and
strategic security, even circulated a
note to various ministries detailing
its concerns and backing a possible
move by the countrys Department
of Commerce to start restricting
imports from China. Unfortunately,
much of the public discussion on
this subject has tended to be
shallow. Few people seem to
understand the trade deficits
underlying causes, its implications
for Indias economy, and what
India should do to create a better
balance.
Theres no question that
Indias overall merchandise trade
deficit is soaring, growing from $13
billion in 2000 to $103 billion in
2010 and an estimated $150 billion
in 2011. At more than 6 percent of
the GDP, Indias trade gap is huge.
The trade deficit has grown even
though India over the past 10 years
has been the fastest-growing
exporter among the worlds top 10
economies. From 2000 to 2010,
Indias exports grew at an annual
rate of 19.3 percentmore than
twice the rate of the 9 percent
growth in world trade and about
the same as the 20.1 percent
average annual growth in Chinas
exports.
The opening of Nathu La in
Indias Sikkim province for trade
between the two countries has also
not been a successful experiment
so far, despite over five years of
existence. The trade has been
limited both in the number of items
that can be cross-exchanged and
the volume that is a forgettable
figure in the overall bilateral trade.
Apparently, the infrastructure
bottlenecks are the main hurdle.
Also, post-1962 period, the
trajectory of the erstwhile trade
through Nathu La has shifted to
other routes and it is indeed a
difficult task to reorient the same.
Today, the pass that was once
witness to a significant amount of
Indo Tibetan trade, is being
increasingly doubted if it will ever
regain its old posture and serve as
an economic bridge between China
and India.
Even if the trade deficit with
China were magically to vanish, it
would do little to address the
countrys trade imbalance. The
deficit with China accounts for less
than 20 percent of the countrys
total trade deficit, with India
importing Made-in-China toys,
consumer electronics,
telecommunications gear, and
power equipment. More damaging
to Indias trade numbers, though,
is the reliance on imported oil, gas,
and coal from such places as Saudi
Arabia, Iran, Australia, and
Indonesia. Energy accounts for
more than 65 percent of the trade
deficit. In sum, the primary trade
challenge for India is rooted in its
rapidly growing need for energy
coupled with the rapidly
increasing price of energy
resources.
Lets now look at the
underlying causes of Indias trade
deficit with China. Childrens toys
may be a highly visible symbol of
Chinas seeming invasion of India.
They account for less than 1
percent, however, of Indias imports
from China. Of Chinas total 2010
exports of more than $40 billion to
India, more than 60 percent came
from capital goods, such as
electrical machinery, nuclear
reactors, boilers, iron and steel
products, ships and boats, and
project goods.
What would happen if the
Indian government were to restrict
imports of Chinese capital goods
into the country? Yes, the trade
deficit with China would come
down, but the countrys overall
trade deficit would become even
bigger. To see why, look at the $8.29
billion order that Indias Reliance
Power placed in 2010 with
Shanghai Electric to supply
equipment that would generate
nearly 24 GW of electricity
annually. (Thats equal to about a
fifth of Indias total electricity
production.) The agreement
included a financing deal with a
consortium of Chinese banks, such
as Bank of China and China
Development Bank, providing low-
cost financing. If Reliance Power
had purchased this equipment
from non-Chinese suppliers, the
price would have been a few billion
dollars higher and the company
would have faced difficulties
figuring out how to pay for the
purchase.
Starting in 2007, Indias
political leaders finally began a
serious effort to address the
countrys massive infrastructure
deficit. This has meant rapid
growth in investment in sectors
such as power,
telecommunications, ports, roads
and highways. Since Indias
domestic producers have been
unable to keep up with the growing
need for machinery and other
capital goods, the country has no
choice but to import equipment.
With prices 30 percent or more
below those offered by suppliers in
the U.S., Europe, or Japan, Chinese
companies have been the natural
beneficiaries of Indias growing
appetite for capital goods. India
does have some things that China
wants: India is one of the worlds
largest producers of iron ore and
cotton, and China is a major
customer. Not surprisingly, as the
worlds largest cotton importer,
China has complained about
Indias recent moves to ban cotton
exports. Given pressure also from
Indias cotton farmers, the
government has now decided
partially to reverse the ban.
It can be said that the good
thing about the entire Sino Indian
trade friction is that India is not the
only country that is at the receiving
end of Chinese export-oriented
economic domination. Most
countries that have vibrant trade
relations with China are suffering
trade deficits, including the US.
Exports apart, Chinas economic
superiority would be complete in
next 20-25 years and all countries
would have to live in Chinas
shadow or make friends with it.
The US has institutionalised an
economic strategic dialogue to
resolve its trade concerns with
China and the two countries have
made decent progress in talking out
mutual trade concerns. Beijing is
increasingly responsive to
Washingtons allegation of unfair
trade practices, primarily as a
result of these talks.
As a neighbour with barrage
of other frictional issues with
China, India can ill-afford to let
economic and trade relations slip
beyond manageable limits and
open another front for heated
exchanges between the two
countries. New Delhi can take
lessons from the US China
example to avoid any future
economic conflict with Beijing. The
just-launched economic strategic
dialogue should be exploited as a
primary mechanism for resolving
all outstanding trade concerns
with China and explore bilateral
cooperation in new areas.
Concurrently, it must not shy away
from implementing the proposed
strategic action plan for
containing the trade deficit with
China. However, New Delhi must
consolidate its domestic
manufacturing sector for resilience
against Chinese imports. Then only
India can negotiate from a position
of strength in the future rounds of
the economic strategic dialogue.
Amit Kumar
5.
In what came as a major
disappointment for the Bhopal gas
tragedy victims, a US Federal Court
on 27 June 2012 absolved Union
Carbide Corporation and its former
chairman Warren Anderson of the
Bhopal gas tragedy case. In his
ruling US district Court Judge John
F. Keenan concluded that UCC is
neither directly nor as an agent of
Union Carbide India Limited
(UCIL) liable for the mishap. While
pronouncing its verdict the court
invoked a 1998 court verdict in a
case involving KFC, in which the
court had observed that legally the
mere assertion that a corporate
parent is or was involved in the
decision-making process of its
subsidiary, or that it controlled the
legitimate policies of its subsidiary,
will not shift liabilities among
distinct corporate entities. The US
court verdict, came in the favor of
UCC, has substantiated its long
held stance over the Bhopal gas
tragedy. The company has long
been in denial of all the charges
made against it by the victims of
the tragedy. Below we are
presenting the time line of the
Bhopal Gas Tragedy and
developments related to it.
Nearly 25000 people had lost
their life in Bhopal Gas Tragedy, one
of the worst industrial disasters of
the world history. The disaster
occurred following the leakage of
poisonous Methyl Iso Cyanate gas
from Union Carbide India Limiteds
(UCIL) , now a subsidiary of Dow
Chemical Company, resulting in the
exposure of over 500,000 people,
pesticides factory in Bhopal on 2-3
December 1984. The catastrophic
gas leak immediately claimed the
life of 3000 people, while the
aftermath of the disaster had
proved to be far more horrifying as
thousands of people died
subsequently due to ill-effects of the
toxic waste in the environment. The
enormity of the damage can well
be assessed by the fact that even
today, after 28 years of the incident;
the people of Bhopal are facing the
wrath of the tragedy. Poor safety
norms of UCIL are one of the
prominent reasons for this tragedy.
In a testimony to the long lasting
catastrophic impact of the gas leak,
a test conducted by the BBC in 2009
found that the water of the affected
region contain 1000 times the
World Health Organizations
recommended maximum amount
of carbon tetrachloride, a
carcinogenic toxin.
Following is the Timeline of
BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY:
December 3, 1984: Toxic
Methyl Iso Cyanate (MIC) gas
releases from Union Carbide
India Ltds (UCIL) pesticide
plant in Bhopal killing about
15,000 people and injuring at
least five lakh others. Millions
were left sick and the affected
passed on the harmful effects
of the gas to the next
generations.
December 4, 1984: Warren
Anderson, the chairman of
Union Carbide, is among nine
people arrested. But he was
freed on bail of $ 2,000, upon
a promise to return. Union
Carbide is named as the 10th
accused in a criminal case
charged with culpable
homicide.
February, 1985: Indian
government files claim for $
3.3 billion from Union
Carbide in a US court.
1986: US District Court judge
transfers all Bhopal litigation
to India.
December 1987: CBI files
charge sheet against Warren
Anderson and other accused,
including UCC (USA), Union
Carbide (Eastern) Hong Kong,
and UCIL. Summons served
on Anderson and UCC on
charges of culpable homicide.
February 1989: CJM, Bhopal,
issues non-bailable warrant of
arrest against Warren
Anderson for repeatedly
ignoring summons.
February 1989: Indian
government and Union
Carbide strike an out-of-court
deal and compensation of $
470 million is given by Union
Carbide.
February March 1989:
Public protest against the
unjust settlement followed by
filing of a number of review
and writ petitions against the
settlement in the Supreme
Court by the Bhopal Gas
Peedith Mahila Udyog
Sangatan (BGPMUS), the
Bhopal Gas Peedith Sangarsh
Sahayog Samiti (BGPSSS) and
other concerned groups.
October 3, 1991: The Supreme
Court revokes criminal
immunity to the firm and its
officials.
November 11, 1991: Criminal
cases against all accused
revived in the chief judicial
magistrates court at Bhopal.
1992: Part of $ 470 million is
disbursed by the government
among Bhopal gas victims.
February 1992: Anderson
declared fugitive by law for
ignoring court summons.
November 1994: Despite
numerous petitions by
survivors groups, the
Supreme Court allows Union
Carbide to sell stake in UCIL
to McLeod Russell (India) Ltd
of Calcutta.
September 1996: Supreme
Court dilutes charges against
Indian officials of Union
Carbide India Limited -
subsidiary, majority owned by
Union Carbide Corporation
[UCC] partly on grounds
that culpability lies with UCC.
August 1999: Union Carbide
announces merger with US-
based Dow Chemicals.
November 1999: Internat-
ional environment watchdog
Greenpeace tests soil,
groundwater and wells in and
around the derelict Union
Carbide factory and finds 12
volatile organic chemicals
and mercury in quantities up
to six million times higher
than expected.
November 1999: Several
victims and survivors
organisations file an action
suit against Union Carbide
and its former CEO, Warren
Anderson, in federal court of
New York, charging Carbide
with violating international
human rights law,
environmental law, and
international criminal law.
February 2001: Union
Carbide refuses to take
responsibility for UCILs
liabilities in India.
January 2002: A study by
Srishti and Toxics Links finds
lead and mercury in breast
milk of nursing mothers in
communities near the plant.
June 2002: Bhopal gas tragedy
survivors launch a protest in
New Delhi when they hear
the Indian government plans
to drop charges against
Anderson.
August 2002: Charges of
culpable homicide are
maintained against Anderson
by Indian court, which
demands his extradition to
stand trial. Meanwhile, a
British newspaper reports that
Anderson is in New York after
US authorities say they are
unable to locate him.
October 2002: Protests to
clean up former UCIL factory
site in Bhopal that activists
say contains thousands of
tonnes of toxic waste.
May 2003: The Indian
government formally conveys
its request for extradition of
Anderson to the US.
March 2004: A US court says
it could order Dow Chemicals
to clean soil and ground water
in the abandoned factory site
if the Indian government
provides a no objection
certificate. The Indian
government forwards the
certificate to the United States.
June 2004: The US rejects
Indias request for extradition
of Anderson saying the
request does not meet
requirements of certain
provisions of the bilateral
extradition treaty.
July 19, 2004: Indias Supreme
Court orders the Central Bank
to pay out more than 15 billion
rupees, part of the original $
470 million received as
compensation kept in the
account since 1992.
October 25, 2004: Bhopal gas
victims protest the failure of
the government to pay
victims compensation.
October 26, 2004: Indias
Supreme Court sets deadline
of November 15 to pay out the
rest of $ 470 million paid by
Union Carbide as
compensation.
June 7, 2010: All eight accused,
including the then Chairman
of Union Carbide Keshub
Mahindra, in the Bhopal Gas
disaster case convicted by a
court.
June 27, 2012: US Federal
Court on 27 June 2012
absolved Union Carbide
Corporation and its former
chairman Warren Anderson
of the Bhopal gas tragedy case.
Activists and victims of the
Bhopal Gas tragedy case, who were
fighting for justice, received a major
blow when a US court held that
neither Union Carbide nor its
former chairman Warren Anderson
were liable for environmental
remediation or pollution-related
claims at the firms former chemical
plant in Bhopal. However, activists
fighting for justice in the case have
stated that the courts decision in
the case was not startling and that
they would appeal again as there
are enough evidence to nail
Anderson. The appeals for
compensation have been rejected
thrice.
With more than 15,000 people
killed and 25 years after the horrific
incident only eight people have
been held guilty and that with a
punishment of 2 years. To top it all
the main accused in the case
Warren Anderson, the then chief of
Union Carbide, is living at his plush
mansion in the United States. No
wonder the media and news
headlines are once again flooded
with the Bhopal Gas verdict and
how easily the Indian Government
bent over backwards to ensure that
Anderson was allowed to leave the
country after the incident. What is
further embarrassing is that a
former top CBI officer, who was
supervising the investigations, is
now on record saying how he was
under pressure to allow Anderson
to leave the country.
The Bhopal Gas tragedy
verdict which has been in the news
headlines these past few days has
once again proved the old saying
that justice delayed is indeed justice
denied...but in this case it is rather
a mockery of the countrys entire
judicial system, it is rather the case
of Justice delayed & Justice denied.
Entire issue is not just about the
punishment to the UCIL or any
other authority responsible for the
tragedy. Its all about the Justice to
the victims and all the people
affected by that tragedy.
Thousands of people lost their lives,
thousands of peoples health is
tremendously affected even now.
What is the value given to the
Human Lives? Why is that it taken
these many years to give the
verdict? And after so many years
they got discharged, Isnt it the case
of Justice delayed & Justice denied?
Apart from this, as the news
reports day after day have been
suggesting, we also need to have
highly accountable system where
both the investigators and the
public prosecutors should be made
responsible if the case is not able to
result in adequate conviction in
court. Media has been highlighting
this issue for quite some time now
as to how even though the workout
percentage in most cases by police
or CBI is very high, their conviction
rate is very poor. This means the
cases fall flat in court perhaps due
to connivance of the prosecutors
and the investigating officers. So
even though the media is
aggressively highlighting the
mockery that has come in form of
the Bhopal Gas tragedy verdict, the
Government definitely needs to
take note of it and come out with
corrective measures sooner than
later.
Pankaj Kumar
http://www.civilservicesmentor.com
91
Politics without policy
The French sociologist and columnist Raymond
Aron had pointed out that in English, there are two
different terms, politics and policy whereas in his own
language there is only one single term, La politique, to
cover both. It is the same in German as in French, for the
same German word, politik, covers both policy and
politics. We should make use of the resources of the
English language to reflect on a distinction that has
acquired crucial importance in the present phase of our
democratic system.
The central concern of politics, as I understand it, is
the pursuit of power. In a democracy the contest for
power is never free from uncertainty and anxiety, and
Indian politics is now marked by increasing turmoil.
Those who make politics their career become accustomed
to its turbulence and some even take a peculiar pleasure
in it.
Policy, on the other hand, is a matter of setting clear
goals and working methodically towards their attainment.
It is, in Max Webers famous phrase, a slow boring of
hard boards. Policymaking requires a calm and settled
environment, and a clear and even temper in the
policymaker. Politicians are expected to play to the
galleries and to gather public applause for their
eloquence. Policy cannot be made under continuous public
gaze, although it can hardly be effective without passing
the test of political approval.
Although politics and policy follow distinct
compulsions and have different orientations, they need
not act against each other. In the last 10 to 15 years politics
has taken such a turn in India that it not only unsettles the
environment required for making viable policies but
openly subverts attempts to reach workable solutions to
difficult practical problems.
KIND OF DUUMVIRATE
The relations between government and opposition
have become increasingly acrimonious over the years.
Even where there is broad agreement over, let us say,
foreign policy or economic policy, each side maintains an
adversarial relationship with the other, fearing that there
will be a loss of face if not a loss of support from its
constituents if it appears conciliatory. The habitually
confrontationist conduct of both government and
opposition is complicated by the fact that neither the one
nor the other speaks in a single voice. This may be a good
thing where it serves to defuse tension but it is not
conducive to deliberations on policy.
The present system in India has settled into
operating as a kind of duumvirate with its own distinctive
features. It has done so without starting with any clear
plan to be what it has become. A division of responsibility
and power has emerged between the Prime Minister and
the head of the ruling party who is also the head of the
ruling coalition. It corresponds neither to the Westminster
model nor to the Leninist model favoured by Communist
parties throughout the world. In the former the prime
minister enjoys clear pre-eminence while in the latter
power rests with the head of the party. Should we be
disheartened that Indian democracy is following a path of
its own?
The general belief among both allies and opponents
is that the relationship between the Prime Minister and the
head of the Congress party is an unequal relationship in
which the former has to act at the behest of the latter,
which would make it closer to the Leninist than the
Westminster model. This, I think, is a mistaken belief.
Whatever may have been the equation between Ms Sonia
Gandhi and Dr. Manmohan Singh in 2004, that equation
has changed with the passage of time. It is true that Dr.
Singh cannot do without Ms Gandhi, but it is equally true
that Ms Gandhi cannot do without Dr. Singh. This truth
becomes more and more evident as we recognise that
both the Prime Minister and the head of the Congress
party have to contend with alliance partners whose sudden
demands can unsettle the most reasonable agreements on
policy.
DISTINCTIVE PARTY SYSTEM
The political party has emerged as an important
institution in modern democratic nations. India has
developed its own distinctive party system. It is neither a
two-party system nor a multi-party system with three,
four or even half-a-dozen parties of the kind commonly
found in continental Europe. It is a system with a
multiplicity of parties. This multiplicity is a reflection of the
size and diversity of our social and political order.
Attention to the demands of coalition partners requires
Selected Articles from various
News Paper
92
accommodation of the claims of patronage as well as of
personal vanity. Any action that may be construed as an
affront or a slight by the leader of even a minor ally can
cause a major political upheaval. The demands of this kind
of political management deflect attention away from the
long-term requirements of policy. In the 21st century
devising effective policy calls for technical skills for which
sound political instincts cannot be a substitute.
The government that Dr. Singh heads would not
work if the Congress party and the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) did not hold together. For all his
intelligence, hard work and probity, it is doubtful that he
would be able to hold the alliance and even his own party
together all by himself.
To say that the relationship between the head of the
government and the head of the UPA has acquired a kind
of stability is not to maintain that it can be made
permanent or given an institutional form. Indian
democracy has moved a long way since the country
became independent and adopted a republican
constitution more than 60 years ago. It has created new
political arrangements as it has faced new political
challenges. It has shown considerable resilience and in
some ways strengthened itself even while setting aside old
arrangements and established ways of thought and
action.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of
independent India took charge of both politics and policy.
His pre-eminence within the Congress party, particularly
after the passing of Sardar Patel and the withdrawal of
Rajaji, was widely, if not universally acknowledged. But
his mastery of policy was also widely acknowledged, at
least within his own party. It would be unrealistic to expect
the present head of the Congress party to have the kind
of grasp of policy matters that Nehru had or Dr. Singh has.
It would be equally unrealistic to expect the present Prime
Minister to deal with party matters with Nehrus self-
assurance.
We cannot go back to Nehrus age, or to the dawn
of independence which began with great, some would
now say unrealistic expectations from our leaders of
government and politics. Nor should we be beguiled by
the hope that a new leader will soon emerge, a true
statesman who will combine in himself all the virtues that
we expected in our political leaders at the time when the
new republic came into being. We have to make the best
of what we have achieved and what we have which is not
inconsiderable. Indian democracy may be disorderly but
it is also vibrant and, like any living system it undergoes
continuous change. It is easy to lose heart in the face of so
much disorder, but democracy advances by facing
disorder, not turning its back on it.
Courtesy-The Hindu
Dealing with the Devils
Excrement
In coming years, India will become evermore
dependent on oil from an evermore troubled region.
Ten years from now, the man who founded OPEC
told a young graduate student during a 1976 interview,
twenty years from now, you will see: oil will bring us
ruin. Indias strategic community ought to reflect on
those words: little-noticed but seismic shifts in oil
geopolitics mean the country is staring at a strategic
challenge of a magnitude it is utterly unprepared for.
From a peak of more than five billion barrels in 2005,
the United States crude oil and refined products imports
fell to 4.14 billion barrels last year [See Table 1]. Imports
from Saudi Arabia and the volatile Persian Gulf have been
in slow but steady decline for years. In 2011, over 23 per
cent of all U.S. crude oil and refined products came from
Canada over twice as much as from Saudi Arabia, six
times as much as Iraq and 20 times as much as Libya. If a
$7-billion pipeline linking Canadas oilfields to refiners in
the U.S. passes environmental hurdles, the country could
even end up being a net exporter of oil.
In time, the U.S. might draw back from the Middle
East on this receding tide of oil a nightmare for India
and other growing Asian powers. Ever since 1947, the
U.S. has used guns and cash to impose order across the
Middle East. Now, India could be left needing evermore
oil from a region that is ever-less stable. India, like China,
has watched helplessly as Western-led policies in the
Middle East have led oil-producing Iraq and Libya into
quasi-anarchy. Irans nuclear programme could,
conceivably, spark-off murderous regional confrontation.
Emerging, oil-thirsty Asia, the United States Energy
Information Administration has estimated, will be
consuming some 33.6 million barrels per day [mpd] of oil
by 2025 more than double its demand at the turn of the
century. It wont be able to get it, though, without order
in the Middle East. For India, there is another peril. Indian
policies on Pakistan have long rested on the assumption
that the U.S. would push its troublesome ally away from
the brink. The reason the U.S. locked itself into an alliance
with Pakistan in the first place, though, was to protect the
Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia and the future, could
care less about regional security.
THE UNSTABLE PETRO-STATE
OPECs founder, Juan Perz Alfonzo, had warned of
oils exceptionally toxic political properties back in 1976:
we are drowning, he famously said, in the Devils
Excrement. The petro-states on which growing
economies like India rely to fuel their search for
prosperity, he had realised, simply cannot be stable. In the
mid-1970s, when Mr. Alfonzo had made his dark
prophecy about ruin to scholar Terry Lynn Karl, the
corrosive character of the Devils Excrement was little
understood. Instead, it appeared to have made the ruler
of every petro-state a Midas. The Shah of Iran promised
his people a great civilisation; Carlos Andrs Prez,
Venezuelas President, imagined a future where
Americans will be driving cars built by our workers in our
modern factories.
In a seminal 1999 article, since fleshed out by other
economists, Dr. Karl explained why the souring of the
93
dream could not just be attributed to mismanagement or
corruption. Instead of building infrastructure and
industries, she noted, the cash available drove petro-states
rulers to establish patronage networks that ensured the
survival of their regimes. There were no incentives to
engage in economic reforms, and easy cash killed
entrepreneurship. In time, generous handouts led entire
polities to develop an addiction to petrodollars.
Few took oil-pessimists seriously in spite of the
clear warning signs that emerged from the 1979 revolution
in Iran. From the outside, Libyas economy grew at six per
cent in 2007, winning it applause from the World Bank.
Bahrain has a per-capita income not dissimilar to New
Zealand. Egypt grew at 4.7 per cent in 2007. Bahrain and
Libya built their future by pumping the seemingly
exhaustible pool of cash from the ground beneath their
feet. Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen exported their own
inexhaustible pool of low-wage workers to the petro-
states.
But the growth rates masked a less happy reality:
the apparent prosperity didnt drive industrialisation or
generate productive jobs. Half the population in the arc of
nations running from Nigeria to Pakistan is less than 25
years old, but unemployment is at record levels.
THE PETRO PARADOX
Theres a simple reason why the worlds economy is
powered by such a politically toxic fuel. Bizarre as it might
sound at a time when petrol costs Indians well over Rs.70
a litre, the Devils Excrement is relatively cheap [See Table
2]. From 1946 to 1973, the price of crude in the U.S. stood
at just over $20 per barrel, measured at 2012 prices. In the
wake of OPECs efforts to ramp up oil prices, and the
Iranian revolution, it surged to over $100. Then, the data
show, oil prices again hovered around the pre-1973
historical average until 2001, when 9/11 ushered in a new
era of war. But even now, crude oil is cheaper in real terms
than in 1980.
Even more important is this: incomes in the U.S., the
worlds largest consumer of oil, have risen faster than oil
prices. In 1929, an average American would have had to
pay 1.49 per cent of her or his annual income of $84.90 to
buy a barrel of crude oil, which then sold for $1.27. Fifty
years later, in the wake of the Iranian revolution, oil prices
soared to $31.61. But the annual earning of the average
American had risen even more sharply, to $7,956. That
meant that a barrel of oil would cost them just 0.39 per
cent of their earnings a quarter of what it did in 1929.
In 2008, oil prices soared to $96.91. The average American
earned $35,931 that year, which means a barrel of oil
would cost them 0.26 per cent of their earnings. Now,
consumers in the worlds great economies are paying
more than ever for oil but those who sell it arent
prospering, either. Barring Norway, the worlds largest oil
exporters are now poorer, relative to the worlds great
economies, than they were five decades ago. The
conclusion must be, the commentator Amir Taheri wrote
in 2006, that those who buy oil get rich and those who
sell it do not.
BIG OIL AND GREAT POWER
For geostrategic experts, though, it has long been
clear that cheap oil comes at a high price. Ever since 1947,
the U.S. purchased stability in the Middle East by funding
client regimes, and setting up a string of bases stretching
from the Persian Gulf to Turkey. In the next six years,
though, U.S. defence spending will decline by as much as
$477 billion a consequence of wrenching economic
pressures which also means there may be less to spend on
propping up pliant governments. Given the countrys
declining interest in Middle East oil, there will also be less
and less reason to do so.
There is no doubt the U.S. will remain the most
significant military force on the planet for decades: its
military spending accounts for 43 per cent of global
military expenditure, against Chinas estimated 7.3 per
cent and Russias 3.6 per cent. The U.S. has 11 aircraft
carriers to the rest of the worlds eight and its air
power is a generation ahead of the competition. However,
the cuts will mean U.S. resources will be more narrowly
focused: targeting potential Chinese expansion in the
Pacific, and using intelligence-led operations to contain
terrorism-related threats. The days of grand expeditionary
warfare in the Middle East are at an end.
India cant say it wasnt warned: for years now, the
U.S. has been doing so. In his 2006 State of the Union
address, President George W. Bush set America on a new
course towards oil independence. America is addicted to
oil, he warned. He vowed to make our dependence on
Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past. Few paid attention,
because past Presidents like Jimmy Carter had said much
the same thing, to little avail but the figures show it is
now happening.
Persian oil, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said to a
British diplomat in 1944, is yours. We share the oil of
Iraq and Kuwait. As for Saudi Arabian oil, its ours. To
that end, the West propped up tyrannies giving birth
to a host of political obscenities. India, China and the other
Asian powers whose future prosperity depends on access
to the Devils Excrement are the future inheritors of the
disorder western withdrawal will leave behind. They must
begin to together prepare for the fallout, or together pay
the price.
Courtesy-The Hindu
India is not a global power
Power in inter-state relations is the capacity as well
as the political will to use that capacity, of one country to
make another country do something which, left to itself,
it would not do or would not want to do. Soft power
should not be considered a component of the concept of
power since it is not relevant to modifying the behaviour
of another country; it can and does serve as a model and
indirectly and over a period of time to earn goodwill
among sections of society of other countries for its culture.
But it has no place in the discussion of power as a means
to bring about a change in the attitude of another country.
India has a genuine attraction for many in the Middle East
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because of its pluralism combined with a functioning
democracy; however, it does not give any power to
India to influence decision-making in those countries.
When we talk of power, we are thinking of military,
economic and diplomatic clout, not of Bollywood or yoga.
SPHERES OF INFLUENCE
The 20th century offers many examples of the
exercise of power by states mostly in neighbouring
countries or countries regarded as forming a part of their
spheres of influence. There were at least 10 cases of
American intervention, starting with Cuba when the Platt
amendment was adopted in the Senate which gave virtual
control over Cuba to the U.S. as well as provided the
framework for the lease of Guantnamo Bay. Other
examples are Panama in 1903, Nicaragua in 1912, Haiti in
1915, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, Chile in 1973, etc. An
example of the blatant exercise of power was the Anglo-
French-Israeli joint attack on the Suez Canal zone in 1956.
The Soviet Union used brute force to restore its
domination of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in
1968. There was of course the Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan in 1979 which had a lot to do with the
eventual collapse of the Soviet empire.
The establishment of the United Nations in 1945 and
the evolution of international law since then have
completely changed the rules of the game of the exercise
of power by the introduction of the concept of legitimacy.
It is universally recognised that there are only two
scenarios of the legitimate use of force: pursuant to the
Security Council authorisation or in the exercise of the
right of self-defence. The latter has been severely
circumscribed by the Charter which lays down that the
right of self-defence can be exercised only in response to
an attack by another state, thus rejecting the pre-
emptive right of self-defence. The one case of unilateral
use of force in the 21st century was the American
intervention in Iraq in 2003 which the international
community refused to recognise as legitimate since it did
not have the imprimatur of Security Council approval nor
was it accepted as having been in the exercise of the right
of self-defence. United States/NATO intervention in
Afghanistan, on the other hand, was sanctioned by the
U.N.
Of the three constituent elements of power
military, economic and diplomatic the economic is
crucial. This is self-evident and does not need elaboration.
One important reason why the Soviet Union lost the Cold
War was the mismatch between its bloated military and
the inability of its economy to support and sustain it.
Is there a superpower in the contemporary world?
The answer is clearly in the negative. America has global
reach, and its military is no doubt the strongest in the
world. But this does not confer on it the capability to
impose its will on others. To be fair to it, the U.S. does not
ask others to recognise it as a superpower, though it does
not protest when the rest of the world describes it as one.
The Americans would rather prefer to be recognised as
the exceptional power. The capacity of its military as well
as the will of its political leadership to deploy anywhere
at any time without worrying about adverse political or
diplomatic reaction remains, but it is severely hobbled by
its increasing economic weakness. To that extent, it is a
global power. But it lacks in other attributes of power. The
most embarrassing moment for American diplomacy was
in March 2003 when it failed to persuade enough
members of the Security Council, including some of its
close allies, to support the second resolution on Iraq
which would have legitimised its intervention in Iraq; only
four countries promised support. More and more
members in the U.N. vote in favour of the resolution
criticising American sanctions against Cuba. The U.S. has
not had much success in getting countries such as India to
fall in line with its Iran policy. Getting its nominee elected
president of the World Bank has less to do with its
diplomatic strength and more to do with the voting
advantage that it and its allies enjoy as also to the lack of
unity among the challengers for the job.
America is without doubt a super soft power. Its
movies, television series, popular music, and, most of all,
its espousal of democratic values have immense
resonance among the youth of the world, especially in the
Arab and Muslim world. But these do not translate into
power.
ABOUT CHINA
China is portrayed as a legitimate claimant for the
title of global power. Chinas economy has been the
principal engine of growth of the world economy but is
now slowing down and facing the prospect of a reality
bubble, political instability and huge corruption scandals.
It is now not clear when, if ever, it will become the biggest
economy in the world. Its military capability is nowhere
close to Americas. In R&D and labour productivity, it is
way behind the U.S. China has increased its military
profile, especially its navy. But the neighbours, while
distrustful, are not afraid of China because of the
American pivot or other factors. Much weaker
countries, such as the Philippines, refuse to be intimidated
by Chinese threats.
If the U.S. and China can be eliminated as candidates
for superpower status, there is no need to consider any
other state for the position.
INDIAS CASE
Is India at least a regional power? The most
conspicuous example of the exercise of power by India
was the operation in 1971 in former East Pakistan. Indias
intervention was not authorised by the U.N.; India justified
it on the ground of self-defence since Pakistan had earlier
attacked several Indian Air Force bases as also on the one
that Pakistan had in fact invaded India in the form of 10
million refugees. There is also the case of the intervention
in the Seychelles in 1986, and one case of ill-advised
military intervention, in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s which
had disastrous consequences for India. There was talk of
India sending a brigade to Iraq in 2003, but wiser counsel
prevailed. As a general rule, Indian participation in
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military operations has been as a part of U.N.-mandated
peace-keeping operations, with the exceptions mentioned.
The global powers of yesteryear became such for
concrete reasons: control over sources of raw materials
including oil and gas and protection of the interests of
their corporations, e.g. the case of the United Fruit
Company in Guatemala in the 1950s, an American
company in which the then CIA director was a
shareholder.
Why do some analysts in India feel enamoured of
the prospect of India being called a global or a regional
power? Is it because of the sense of self-importance or
prestige? Will such a title give India a place at the high
table in international diplomacy? Others sometimes use
this adjective for us for one or both of these reasons: to
flatter us and we are the most flattery-prone people in
the world and/or to make us take foreign policy steps
which would serve the objectives of those flattering us.
Will the label of regional power help ameliorate the lives
of the poor in our country, which is and should continue
to be the guiding principle of our domestic as well as
external policy? Further, while we have soft power of
doubtful practical utility, we definitely are or have become
or are becoming a super soft state. Indias neighbours
have the full measure of its will, or lack thereof, to use
whatever hard power it has. One criterion of military
power ought to be, not the unlimited capacity to pay for
imports of hardware, but how much of it is the country
able to manufacture domestically; India fares poorly in this
respect. The possession of nuclear weapons does not
change anything. Pakistan too has them. And, our nuclear
weapons did not deter Pakistan from indulging in the
Kargil adventure, but Pakistans nuclear weapons
apparently deterred us from crossing the Line of Control
(LoC) at that time, and restrained us after 26/11. The
boom years of Indias economy seem to be over at least
for the short term. Our forex reserves have ceased to
grow and are likely to dwindle, with the rising energy bill
and diminished exports. A reduction in interest rates
might at some stage induce NRIs to start pulling out their
deposits as it happened in 1990-91. A declining economy
makes for a poor case for acceptance as a power of any
kind.
In todays world, the concepts of super or global or
even regional power do not make sense. We should not
waste our time or energy over this non-issue. Fortunately,
the Indian government does not seem to be much
preoccupied about such recognition.
Courtesy-The Hindu
The injustice of delayed
justice
Out of sheer interest, and enjoying the considerable
leisure time at my disposal, I was reading the book, The
Law is an Ass , compiled by Ronald Irving. It had an
interesting passage on the laws delays:
My Lord; my clients have great reason to complain
of the great injury suffered by them in consequences of
these causes not keeping their situation at the head of
your lordships paper, agreeably to your lordships order
repeatedly given in my hearing. It is now nearly seven
years since they have been waiting for your lordships
judgment; and upwards of two years and a half ago, they
had arrived at the top of the paper; at which I humbly
entreat they may, until you decide upon them, remain.
There is a fund in Court of Pounds 10,000 and upwards,
locked up until your lordship decides on those causes, and
it is therefore a matter of great importance to my
unfortunate clients that your lordships decision may not
be delayed by the circumstances to which I have above
alluded. It is painful to me to state to your lordship, that I
have learnt from authority, which I have no reason to
doubt, that the infant, for whose benefit these suits were
instituted twenty years ago, died of a broken heart, on
account of being kept out of his property; and that I have
to contend against the bitter feelings of his relations.
Under the distressing circumstances, knowing that your
lordship will pardon the liberty I have taken in thus
addressing you, and which nothing but the imperious
necessity of the case could have induced me to have done,
I have the honour, etc.
Solicitor s letter to Lord Eldon, the Lord
Chanceller, July 15, 1820
The Law has its majesty elsewhere, but often not
where it must have it. Rightly, a reference is made byThe
Hindu in its editorial Settle election disputes quickly
(June 8) to how Section 86 (6) of the Representation of the
People Act, 1951 enjoins High Courts to hold trials from
day to day until their conclusion. And subsection 86(7)
declares that every election petition shall be tried as
expeditiously as possible and endeavour shall be made to
conclude the trial within six months from the date on
which the election petition is presented to the High Court
on trial.
PAINFUL FACT
It is surprising and somewhat painful that election
petitions are not being disposed of, on the basis of day-
to-day proceedings, within six months from the date of
filing. Is the law to remain shallow?
Without appearing to blow ones own trumpet, I
would like to narrate something that happened in my
own court when I was Puisne Judge of the Madras High
Court. Today, of course, it is not uncommon to come
across instances where political battles are waged in the
court of law.
One day, a petition challenging the election to the
Tamil Nadu Assembly of M.G. Ramachandran from
Andipatti constituency, suddenly appeared in my court
list. The challenge was based on the fact that, while being
confined to a hospital bed in Boston, M.G. Ramachandran
had not signed the required forms, nor was he conscious
as to the happenings. These points were argued with all
the vehemence that the senior counsel concerned could
summon. Therefore, a request was made that the case be
taken up immediately. I acceded to the request of the
senior member of the Bar. However, I emphatically told
96
him, drawing his attention to Section 86(6) and 87 of the
Representation of the People Act, that once the case was
taken up for trial, it would go on from day to day; and on
no account would there be any adjournment. Counsel
readily agreed. But on the third day of hearing, he
requested an adjournment on the ground of personal
inconvenience. I had to ask, with a certain amount of
firmness, as to what the understanding between counsel
and court was before the case was taken up for trial.
I had to deny the request, and told him that a senior
counsel was assisted by an equally senior advocate, and
the case would go on with his help. The case went on. The
election petition was disposed of within 21 days, including
the day the judgment was delivered.
It is the judicial edifice that lends real dignity and
charm to a nation. Therefore, it has to be reared with care
and caution, devotion and determination. The ultimate
progress of a land depends on the intellectual and moral
standards of the people that comprise it.
The various parts that make up the edifice have to
be strong and secure, resting on solid foundations, so that
the structure may be a judicial Mahal, a powerhouse
radiating wisdom, happiness and peace. A spirit of efficient
and dedicated service is the foundation on which the
reputation of the court rests. It is not so much genius as
it is earnestness that is required. Faith is in the sanctity of
the calling, a burning passion to give the very best to
litigants. A steadfast determination to train such
practitioners of law on healthy lines is the need of the
hour.
Remember the words of Cicero: How invincible is
justice if it be well spoken.
Courtesy-The Hindu
ONE SIMPLE STEP TO INCREASE OUR GDP
In America, 12 per cent of the population is counted
as disabled, the corresponding percentage in England is 18
and in Germany, nine. In India, government statistics claim
it is two per cent. Javed Abidi of the National Centre for
Promotion of Employment for Disabled People has a
very poignant question with regard to the above
numbers: what is so amazing about the Indian
environment or climate or gene pool that we have only
a tenth or a fifth of the number of persons with disabilities
when compared to other countries? Or is it that something
is wrong with our counting?
Until the year 2000 53 years after Independence
the Census did not record a single disabled person in
India! In other words, in the minds of the people making
policy, taking decisions and allocating funds, the disabled
did not exist. And if they did not exist, obviously we did
not do much for them. So in the first 53 years of
Independence, while we were building the infrastructure
of our country, we did little or nothing to include them in
our thoughts and actions. Therefore, the bulk of our
infrastructure is not disabled-friendly, leaving them further
marginalised, and disabling them further.
How we behave with the disabled among us tells us
what kind of a people we are.
Ketan Kothari, another expert, explains how, by and
large, we have two kinds of reactions to disabled people:
one, that they must have done something wrong in their
previous birth and therefore deserve what they got; two,
let us use them as a ticket to heaven make a donation
to an organisation working for the disabled, or give
money to a disabled person asking for alms, and score
some brownie points with God. If this is how many of us
behave towards the disabled, it is a sorry picture that we
paint of ourselves.
Time to change, guys.
So where and how should this change begin?
Education.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme and the
Right to Education Act say that every child in India is
guaranteed an education. Despite that, most regular
schools in India deny admission to children with
disabilities. They cite lack of infrastructure and trained
special educators. They are probably right. But what stops
so many schools across India from becoming inclusive and
disabled-friendly? Who is putting a gun to their heads, not
allowing them to do this? Im afraid it is our own lack of
thought, application of mind, and maybe of heart. Lets
change that. If we start today, each school (if it really wants
to) can become a truly integrated school within a period
of two, or at most three, years. Let each school make this
its target.
Currently, an alarmingly low percentage of children
with disabilities are educated. Without the foundation of
a strong education, no child can reach his or her potential
in life. By denying children with disabilities admission in
regular schools, we are denying them their right to
education and, therefore, their right to make their lives
productive.We are also denying other children the right to
intermingle with, learn from, and grow up with friends
with disabilities, and vice versa . With education for our
persons with disabilities, we can prepare them to be
productive, look after themselves, and their families.
The government says two per cent of our
population is disabled. Various experts and NGOs say it is
six per cent. I think it is safe to assume that the number is
somewhere between six and 10 per cent lets say eight.
Now eight per cent of 1.2 billion is 96 million. That is
more than the population of England (51 million), France
(65 million) and Germany (80 million). As Mr. Abidi puts
it, what we as society need to decide is, do we want 96
million of our population to be uneducated, unemployed,
unproductive and left with no choice but to be a weight
that the rest of us carry? Or do we want them to be
educated, employed, productive, able to look after
themselves and their families, contributing to the growth
and wealth of our nation? If we want the latter then we
simply cannot achieve that without including them in our
mainstream education system. Thats the bottom line.
Courtesy-The Hindu
REFORMS YES, BUT OF THE RIGHT TYPE
Slowdown in the growth of gross domestic product
(GDP), a virtual stagnation in industrial production and
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the risk of losing investment grade rating by international
rating agencies like Standard and Poors has rattled the
government, industry and policymakers. The dominant
view as expressed by influential members of the
government and other policymakers favours the
introduction of major liberalisation policies aimed at
facilitating the entry of foreign direct investment (FDI) in
service sectors like retail trade, insurance, legal and other
services as a means of reversing the slowdown. In my
opinion, such an approach is flawed. Sustained growth is
not possible without a healthy and growing
manufacturing sector; attracting FDI in the services sector
would at best play only a minor role. Indeed, Indias
overdependence on the service sector and the neglect of
its manufacturing sector is partly responsible for the
deceleration in growth. Results from most research
studies show that for India, the service sector cannot be
the engine for a sustained growth of income and
employment. Like China, India should also concentrate
on the manufacturing sector, for, in the long run, the
growth of the service sector would also depend on the
manufacturing base.
REAL CONSTRAINTS
Research studies, by and large, zero in on two sets
of constraints that stand in the way of the development
of Indian manufacturing sector: physical and government
infrastructure. These two are, in a way, related and could
reinforce each other. In the last few years, India has not
invested sufficiently in physical infrastructure like
electricity, roads, ports and railways. This has resulted in
huge shortages in electricity supply relative to demand,
leading to long hours of load shedding, power holidays
and even closure of several manufacturing units. Some of
the large enterprises have opted for captive electricity
generating plants, resulting in high costs and making their
products globally non-competitive. Small and medium
enterprises cannot afford captive power units and they are
the main victims of power shortage.
Likewise investments in roads and railways have
been inadequate, hampering the development of the
manufacturing sector by increasing the cost of
transportation. The presence of corruption and bad
governance has made the situation worse. It is common
knowledge that only a fraction of the investments on
roads and other infrastructure projects actually reach the
targeted projects as the leakages are large. This leads to
the second set of constraints for manufacturing growth,
namely, governance infrastructure.
Numerous studies show a strong relationship
between good (corruption free) governance and
investment climate. In the current globalised investment
and trade regime, the same set of variables influences
both foreign and domestic investment. At present, faced
with 0.1 per cent growth rate in the industrial sector, the
government is planning to offer interest rate and fiscal
incentives to reduce costs and stimulate investment. In this
context, it is important to note that corruption is also like
a tax that pushes up the costs the only difference being
the sums collected through bribes do not go to the
government but to private individuals. Thus, given the
high levels of corruption, merely reducing interest rates
might not be effective in making Indian enterprises more
competitive.
High levels of corruption, in addition to pushing up
costs, also adversely affect the quality of investment. It is
now fairly well established that corrupt countries mainly
receive investments from other corrupt countries, which
does not result in technology transfer leading to global
competitiveness. Thus, bad governance affects both the
quantity and quality of investment. Moreover, even
medium sized Indian enterprises are now investing in
other countries and import products from their foreign
units into India. Last year, the FDI outflow from India was
more than 60 per cent of the FDI inflow into India.
Newspaper reports indicate that this year FDI outflows
from India could be equal to or even exceed FDI inflows
into India. Indian enterprises find it difficult to do business
in the current Indian environment and prefer to set up
units in other countries and import the products into India.
Furthermore, while the manufacturing sector dominates
Indian investments abroad, foreign investments in India
are mainly in the service sector, construction activities and
real estate. This alarming situation cannot be reversed
without major reforms that target good governance and
removal of corruption.
SCAMS AND REFORMS
In the last few years, major scams have broken out
in resources sectors that are mainly owned by the
government like real estate, mining and ores, and
spectrum.
Quite a lot of individuals who have obtained
government permission to enter and exploit these resource
sectors have amassed billions of rupees. In other words,
under the existing business environment, the path to
amass wealth is not through manufacturing but through
exploitation of resources under government ownership.
This needs to change. It is alleged that as a result of these
scams, decision-making in the government has come to a
standstill as bureaucrats are afraid to take decisions. It is
strange that officials have been vested with many
discretionary powers which they now rightly refuse to
exercise. Corruption mainly takes place where important
discretionary powers are vested with the decision maker
and where rules are not clear-cut and decision making is
not transparent. The way out of the mess is to reform the
decision-making process by making it transparent and
rule-based and by drastically reducing the discretionary
powers of officials. So far, despite brave declarations of
intent, no serious attempt has been made in this direction
of administrative reforms.
In addition to administrative reforms, the
government should also introduce rules and laws to
drastically discourage cash transactions and cash holdings.
Corruption cannot be reduced so long as cash transactions
dominate. Newspapers frequently report police and
income tax raids and the discovery of huge amounts of
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cash kept at home, offices and lockers. Subsequently, in
many instances, the cases are dropped as the individuals
succeed in explaining the source of their cash holdings. In
this context, it is vital to introduce laws that discourage
cash transactions. Drastic situations need drastic remedies.
To discourage cash transactions, the government could
place a limit on cash transactions. For example the
government could declare that any transaction, say, above
Rs. 5000 should be a bank or credit card transaction and
not a cash transaction. This will bring huge expenditures
on items like consumer durables, hotels and resorts under
bank transactions and increase accountability. Likewise, the
government could place a limit to cash holdings at homes,
offices and lockers. The limit could be as low as one or two
lakh rupees.
To conclude, a high growth rate for the Indian
economy cannot be sustained without a vibrant and
growing manufacturing sector. A policy aimed at GDP
growth based mainly on attracting investment in the
services sector will not succeed. Moreover, a thriving
manufacturing sector is vital for employment generation.
Under these circumstances, reforms should be aimed at
good governance, transparent and time bound decision-
making, reduction of currency transactions and holdings,
and the rule of law.
Courtesy-The Hindu
FIRST TEST FOR NEW MYANMAR
Along-festering wound in Myanmar has burst and if
not attended to swiftly could pose a threat to the nascent
process of political reform in that country. Decades of racial
and religious animosity between the Buddhist community
and Rohingyas in Rakhine, formerly Arakan, on the
countrys western coast, erupted in serious clashes that left
at least 20 people dead over the past week. The trigger for
the violence was the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist
woman, and it has led to retaliatory killings and calls
among the Rakhine Buddhist community for the
expulsion of the Rohingyas from Myanmar. The Rohingya
Muslims have for centuries lived in Rakhine, where their
number is estimated at 750,000. But Myanmar has denied
them citizenship, and treats them as illegal immigrants
from Bangladesh. During the long years of military rule
in Myanmar, thousands of Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh
fearing persecution. Dhaka does not recognise them as its
own either. Indeed, not wanting any transboundary
spillover from the present round of violence, Bangladesh
has turned away hundreds of stateless Rohingyas trying
to flee to its shores in boatloads over the weekend. For
India, the violence is of particular concern as it is in an area
that is key to its plan to build connectivity with Myanmar
and the rest of South-East Asia.
The troubles in Rakhine are a challenge to the
gradual process of national reconciliation that President
Thein Sein has set in motion since 2010. The process has
been two-fold: democratic reforms in partnership with
Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar s pro-
democracy movement; and, peace-building with the many
ethnic insurgencies on the countrys borders with India,
China and Thailand. In fact, the entire process is really one
of delayed nation-building. But it would remain
incomplete without the inclusion of the Rohingyas. The
danger is that sections of the military that are unconvinced
about the need for reforms may use the Rakhine incidents
to advocate a roll-back. Rakhine has been placed under
emergency laws already. Beyond the restoration of law
and order, Myanmars pro-democracy movement, which
has a big stake in the reforms, must take the lead in
pushing the demand for addressing the issues that
underlie the problems in Rakhine. Ms Suu Kyi and the
National League for Democracy kept away from the
Rohingya cause all these years, perhaps because of
concerns that it might not appeal to the majority Buddhist
population. But that is no longer an option for a political
party that is now seen as playing an important role in
shaping a new Myanmar.
Courtesy-The Hindu
THIS RENAISSANCE IS JUST A FAIRY TALE
For a professed proponent of liberalisation and free
trade, Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs penchant for a
technology that cannot float without subsidies is telling.
Nuclear powers unfavourable economics are not lost on
Dr. Singh.
Recently, Westinghouse Electric and Nuclear Power
Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) signed a
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to negotiate the
setting up of AP1000 reactors in Gujarat, ending a slump
in interest from the Toshiba subsidiary in Indias nuclear
market. For Toshibas Westinghouse and other nuclear
equipment suppliers, the Civil Nuclear Liability Acts
clause on supplier liability was the key hurdle to investing
in India. The companies wanted the Indian government to
insulate them from the financial fallouts of any potential
disaster caused by their technology by spreading that
liability among taxpayers. The recent MoU suggests some
progress in moving towards this goal.
More obstacles remain, though. Nuclear projects are
un-bankable. The government may deploy mental health
specialists to deal with the fears of Kudankulam protestors.
But those shrinks are unlikely to be able to allay the fears
of financiers or nuclear equipment suppliers.
According to nuclear energy expert Peter Bradford,
The most implacable enemy of nuclear power in the past
30 years has been the risk not to public health but to
investors wallets. No nuclear power project has ever bid
successfully in a competitive energy market anywhere in
the world. Mr. Bradford was member of the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission and chair of the New York and
Maine electricity regulatory commissions. He teaches a
course on nuclear power at the Vermont Law School.
SECOND THOUGHTS
Unpredictable financial implications associated with
constructing, running, decommissioning plants and
handling nuclear risks are causing a rethink on nuclear
energy worldwide. But these developments seem to slip
by India without so much as causing a ripple.
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Germany and Switzerland have decided to phase
out nuclear power, despite their substantial dependence on
it. Israel abandoned its year-old civilian nuclear
programme after Fukushima. Belgium revived a pre-
Fukushima decision to phase out nuclear power, using the
Japanese disaster as a reminder. Italy and Kuwait gave up
their nuclear debut by abandoning plans for 10 and four
plants respectively. Mexico dropped plans for constructing
10 plants. All of Japans 54 reactors are now closed, and
plans for 14 new reactors killed.
The story of nuclear energys unviability is told not
just by the actions of naysayers, but also by the
experiences of those like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Iran, Turkey, Vietnam and South Africa pursuing
nuclear programmes. All of them want the nuclear
option, but have no idea how they will finance it.
If the U.S. is Dr. Singhs inspiration, then the so-called
nuclear renaissances trajectory in that country gives even
more cause for despair. In 2009, the U.S. declared a nuclear
revival with promises of more than 30 new reactors.
Today, most of these projects are doomed. Even
candidates for federal loan guarantees such as the South
Texas project, and the Calvert Cliffs-3 project in Maryland,
have been mothballed.
State governments in the U.S. do not seem to share
the Federal Governments enthusiasm for nukes. Bills to
reverse moratoria on nuclear plants in Minnesota,
Kentucky and Wisconsin failed last year. In Missouri,
North Carolina and Iowa, legislators defeated bills to
charge electricity consumers in advance to finance
reactors.
At the time of Fukushima, only four countries
China, Russia, India and South Korea were building
more than two reactors. In these four nations, citizens pay
for the new reactors the government chooses to build
through direct subsidies or energy price hikes, Bradford
notes.
Finland was among the few that reiterated its
commitment to nuclear power after the Fukushima
disaster. The 1,600 MW Olkiluoto nuclear plant uses
French company Arevas technology. Arevas modular
design was expected to make it faster and cheaper to build.
But 11 years later, the project is behind schedule and its
$4.2 billion budget is up now by 50 per cent. After
Fukushima, Areva admits that the same plant would cost
$8 billion. Even Arevas home project, in Flamanville,
France, has suffered a $4 billion cost overrun and a four
year delay. Indeed, 31 out of 45 reactors that were being
constructed globally around 2009 were either delayed or
did not have official dates for commissioning, says a
report for the German Government by consultant Mycle
Schneider.
IN INDIA
In Kalpakkam, meanwhile, the Prototype Fast
Breeder Reactor was slotted to contribute to the grid in
March 2012. In 2005, Baldev Raj, Director of the Indira
Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, boasted
that the 500 MW unit will be completed in 2010, 18 months
before schedule. Till date, there is no sign of this
happening. The Kudankulam plant, which is now 23 years
old since conception, lost only eight months due to
protestors.
In Jaitapur too, the government has more to worry
about than local protestors. Areva, the technology
supplier, is in trouble. Last year, it announced losses of
1.6 billion, and the sacking of 1,200 workers in Germany.
Last June, it decided to suspend production at a Virginia
reactor component plant due to declining market
prospects. Its expansion plans in France, the United
Kingdom, and the U.S. may never materialise. Areva
expected to sell 50 nuclear reactors this decade. It has not
received a single order since 2007.
Now, with a socialist president at the helm in France,
Arevas future looks even more uncertain. French
President Franois Hollande had promised voters a
reduction in nuclear dependence from 75 to 50 per cent,
and shutdown of an aging reactor in Fessenheim.
Whether or not he carries through with these promises,
it appears certain that no new plants will be built or
planned during his term. Both conservative-led Germany
and socialist France will make up the shortfall from the
nuclear phase-out, by investing in renewables for
electricity and new jobs. In replacing nuclear with
renewables, these nations are declaring that despite its
carbon dividend, nuclear is too risky financially,
politically and environmentally to pursue.
Courtesy-The Hindu
A law that enables
The National Advisory Councils suggestions for
strengthening the draft law on the Rights of Persons With
Disabilities (PWD) is a potentially far-reaching
intervention. The step is in sync with the recent
notification of a separate Department for Disabilities in the
Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, which
was announced in the Presidents 2012 address to
Parliament. Ever since India ratified the United Nations
Convention on the rights of PWDs in 2007, the formulation
of a comprehensive law became imperative and these two
developments suggest things are finally moving ahead.
Currently, there are four separate pieces of legislation
pertaining to Indias disabled population. The earliest, the
1987 Mental Health Act, predates the discourse on
affirmative action for the disabled in India and, to that
extent, the status of mental illness as a disability remains
ambiguous. Then, there is a separate law that deals with
the creation of qualified and trained personnel for the
provision of rehabilitation and education services for this
segment of the population. The third, the PWD Act of 1995,
is underpinned by an emphasis on anti-discrimination and
guarantees of equal opportunities. Although the latter was
envisaged as a comprehensive law, it did not address fully
the conditions of persons with other equally severe
disabling conditions. Hence the 1999 Act for people with
autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and multiple
disabilities.
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It is hardly surprising that these four laws in
themselves have not mitigated the sense of apathy and
bureaucratic red tape that hamper the creation of an
enabling environment. The mechanisms and procedures
involved are riddled with duplication and inconsistencies,
as evidenced by the evolving case law over questions of
jurisdiction and interpretation of different laws. More than
a billion people around the world experience one or
another form of disability, according to the World Health
Organisation and World Bank 2011 report. On other
estimates, about 10 per cent of the population in
developing countries is disabled. By any reckoning, Indias
numbers would be much larger than what governments
are prepared to acknowledge, given the detrimental
influences of poverty, illiteracy and poor health on
disability. It follows that stepping up investments in health
and education is one of the important ways of preventing
disabilities and mitigating their impact over the long term.
Requiring service providers to furnish a declaration of
conformity with the relevant laws is the other means to
ensure accountability and effective enforcement. An
umbrella legislation will go a long way in altering the
present state of affairs.
Courtesy-The Hindu
Constitutionally empowered
Act
Twenty years have passed since the Act on new
Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) was put in place by the
Constitution 73rd Amendment (1992). There were high
hopes of empowering rural Indias two long-neglected
sections of society women and Dalits through
reservation of seats in elections to panchayat bodies. The
reform was seen, understandably, as a major step in the
direction of Dalit liberation.
Yet after two decades of its functioning, many feel
that nothing much has come of this exercise. The reasons
are not far to seek. From Day One, hard-core caste Hindu
opponents of Dalits seemed bent on making the system
non-functional inasmuch as it benefited Dalits. The 1992
constitutional amendment introduced systematic
reservation of political positions for Dalits (besides
women) in institutions of governance at the grass-roots
level. This was the first time this was happening in the
long history of local bodies in the country something
large sections of caste Hindus could hardly digest.
In some places in Tamil Nadu, for instance, rich and
powerful caste Hindu groups either forced Dalit aspirants
to keep off the polls, or fielded handpicked farm workers
as candidates, or auctioned the PRI posts to the highest
bidder. In many villages across the country, Dalit
candidates who manage to win are very often denied
cooperation from their caste Hindu masters elected to the
post of vice president or as panchayat members. In several
panchayats, the clerk remains indifferent and
disrespectful, more so if he happens to be a caste Hindu.
There are also instances of corrupt government officials
misleading panchayat chiefs by taking advantage of their
many weaknesses. In five village panchayats in Tamil
Nadu reserved for Dalits, no election could be held for two
five-year terms owing to strong resistance from caste
Hindu residents. The failure to conduct elections always
leads to tension between the two social groups in the
villages and discrimination of the worst kind against Dalits.
Instances of discrimination against Dalits have been
reported more intensely and frequently in Rajasthan,
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal,
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, States in
which the Dalit population is concentrated. The 20 years
of work in village- and district-level panchayat institutions
notwithstanding, there is still a long way to go. When the
PRIs in their amended form were launched two decades
ago, governments at the Centre and in the States declared
that the empowerment of Dalits by providing them
reserved seats in PRIs would lead to the abolition of the
practice of untouchability in the years to come. But the
reality is that much more has to be done to achieve this,
say, by delegating more authority and giving more funds
to these institutions so as to create confidence among
panchayat leaders. The government must revive the
practice of conducting capacity-building classes for Dalit
panchayat chiefs if it is really interested in further
empowering elected panchayat functionaries and
facilitating the underprivileged to fulfil their commitments
to the people. What is needed today is to equip Dalits with
what they need to ensure the achievement of the twin
objectives of economic development and social justice.
MAJOR DISCRIMINATIONS PERSIST
Simon Chauchard, in his brilliant article Panchayati
raj and untouchability, in Business Line (Opinion Page,
June 6, 2012), throws new light on the subject.
Commending the government for going ahead with
the introduction of reservation of seats for Scheduled
Castes and Scheduled Tribes in PRIs ignoring the protests
from dominant caste groups, he points out that this has
enabled the SCs and the STs to get elected to tens of
thousands of political positions. He says recent studies
have shown that major discriminations persist. In his
view, while members of the SCs on average do not
materially benefit in a significant way from an experience
with an SC sarpanch, these reservations lay the ground for
what may be an equally important kind of social change.
A recent study by Evidence, a Madurai-based
organisation working on Dalit issues, has documented a
series of discriminations against panchayat presidents
spread over 10 districts in Tamil Nadu. The study finds
that 94 per cent of the 171 Dalit panchayat presidents
studied have not been given any training; seven
panchayat presidents were not allowed to sit on chairs; all
the 171 panchayat chiefs have complained of
discrimination by caste Hindus; and 32 of them have given
in writing charges of discrimination. The study also shows
that the majority of panchayat presidents are ignorant
about the need to fight untouchability. This, if anything,
tells us that real empowerment of Dalits lies not in merely
providing constitutional status to PRIs but in
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strengthening their capabilities for independent thinking
and for standing up to their oppressors. Only education
and knowledge, and pro-active interventions by
emancipatory socio-political movements, can help achieve
this. The media can also play a significant agenda-building
role in bringing this about.
Courtesy-The Hindu
Lethal ingredients in the
Rio+20 mocktail
Over 100 world leaders will meet in Rio de Janeiro
this week for the U.N. Conference on Sustainable
Development, popularly referred to as Rio+20 Global
Earth Summit.
It is being held amidst a world running low on
drinking water and productive land and set against the
backdrop of accelerating global warming, climate change,
chemical contamination of air, land and water, drinking
water depletion, extinction of forest and bio-diversity
organisms, extreme weather events, energy insecurity,
ocean acidification and environmental degradation. The
current growth process has devastated natural resources
and habitats, created environmental refugees and is,
today, posing a serious threat to continuation of life on
planet earth itself. The Rio+20 meet is taking place 20 years
after the 1992 First Earth Summit, when more than 120
heads of state met against the background of imminent
ecological disaster caused by a development paradigm
based on unlimited growth and industrial expansion
premised on the limitlessness of natural resources.
Sustainable development growth which does
not endanger the rights of future generations to access
and enjoyment of the same resources came to be
accepted as the test for deciding the path of all growth and
development processes. Protecting environmental
resources, empowering marginalised communities and a
central role for public institutions remained the central
pillars of the Rio 1992 approach.
The failing of the sustainable development model
was that it created a false understanding that
sustainability was possible without having to counter
the logic or model of industrial society with its paradigm
of accumulation of capital. The context for the U.N.
Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 meet is
outlined in the UNEP Document Towards a Green
Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and
Poverty Eradication. The document details the
widespread disillusionment with our prevailing
economic paradigm, a sense of fatigue emanating from
the many concurrent crises and market failures
experienced during the very first decade of the new
millennium, including especially the financial and
economic crisis of 2008.
ECONOMIC VALUE ON NATURE
The Rio+20 document seeks to create an architecture
of environmental protection by placing an economic value
on nature and natural processes. Nature would be treated
as products to be traded in commodities and futures
markets, open for speculation in the derivatives
markets. Similar to carbon credit trading, those who
damage nature in one region could continue
environmentally damaging processes by growing forests
in some other part of the world to earn natural resource
or bio-diversity credit.
What the new Green Economy is putting forward
is the notion that it is because nature and natures
resources are not valued that people abuse nature. The
heart of the new UNEP green economy paradigm is a
corporate-led, evolved and inclusive vision of the future
of the planet. This definitional paradigm is, however,
destructive, dangerous and damaging.
The Green Economy proposes that a financial value
be placed on nature and, what the paper calls Natures
Services like clean air, water, trees, fruits and so on. In
simple words, what the Green Economy proponents
propose is that organisms like bees, butterflies and birds
act as natures service providers providing services like
pollination, fertilization, seed germination which today,
they say, is done free. If these services are priced they
can be made available for sale in the biodiversity
market!
Thus, once ecosystem services and biodiversity
goods are priced and can be sold and purchased like any
other commodity, new markets in ecosystems and
biodiversity will be created.
Arising from this framework are a number of new
speculative, derivative based market instruments very
thoughtfully and evocatively packaged as ecosystem
services and biodiversity banking. Thus forests and
rivers become natural capital and natural processes such
as pollination by bees become ecosystem services
provided by the corporate entity, Earth.
Benefit transfers, biodiversity banks and
speculator trading in financial instruments derived from
the artificially assigned value of ecosystems set the
context for forest carbon credit markets and
biodiversity credit markets. The outlines of this process
is etched by one of the architects of the Green Economy,
a former banker of Deutche Bank, Pavan Sukhdev in his
report, The Economic of Ecosystems and Biodiversity.
IGNORING THE CRISIS FACTORS
The voluminous 600+ pages of the Green Economy
document pays pious homilies to the sanctity of the
environment and the need for eco-restoration. But not
even once does the report acknowledge that todays crises
have been caused by dangerously polluting industries, the
extractive mining sector, chemical industries or industrial
agriculture.
The fixation with corporate-techno-managerial
solutions presented by the UNEP report stands out
against the poor respect and recognition given to
traditional knowledge systems for governing the
commons and customary practices of managing
waterways, forests, bio-mass and seas.
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Some positive proposals include sustainable public
procurement policies, ecological tax reform, public
investments in sustainable infrastructure including in
public transport, renewable energy or retrofitting of
existing infrastructure and buildings for improved energy-
efficiency.
The core issue of a true green economy, however, is
the fundamental principle that all natural resources belong
to the global commons and are too critical for life to be
commoditised or financialised, to be determined by the
fickle world of markets.
Contrary to the UNEP view that it is a myth that
there is a dilemma between economic progress and
environmental sustainability, the truth is as a set of
concerned world citizens put it that a sustainable,
commons-based model cannot, in good conscience,
further the myth of limitless, extractive development. That
would be to promote a false expectation that will lead to
the collapse of our societies and planet.
The corporate centredness of UNEP is exposed by
the calculated manner in which it ignores examples of
alternate attempts to evolve a more holistic, integrated,
equitable, inclusive paradigm. Environmentally ravaged
countries in Latin America like Bolivia and Ecuador have
come up with exciting new paradigms for development.
Bolivias Mother Earth policy recognises the right to life
and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and
processes free from human alteration; the right to pure
water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to
be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure
modified or genetically altered. It also enshrines the right
of nature to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and
development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems
and the local inhabitant communities.
In Ecuador there has been a vigorous movement for
a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature. Noted
Ecuadorian economist Alberto Acosta put it eloquently,
Nature has much to say and it is high time we, its
children, stopped playing deaf.
The Second Earth Summit will come and go the way
many other summits have gone, with little, if any,
difference to Mother Earths predicament. The
Government of India too, did not deem it necessary to
consult its citizens to ask them how, together as a nation,
we should face the pressing environmental crises of our
times. But considering the pro-corporate dispensation of
the UPA-II, it is not surprising at all. For Indias elite, as
elsewhere too, have forgotten Mahatma Gandhis solemn
warning: Earth provides enough to satisfy every mans
need but not every mans greed.
Courtesy-The Hindu
Expanding strategic
partnership
The June 13 U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue left some
commentators in both countries complaining that there
was less to it than met the eye. We disagree: it seems to
us to have finally almost by stealth begun shifting
the U.S.-India conversation toward something that
deserves the name strategic, centred on policy
consultations on the world beyond South Asia.
HUGE AGENDA
Both governments emphasised the breadth of the
binational dialogue. In the week before the ministerial
meeting, the United States government hosted six other
bilateral events on health, womens issues, education,
science and technology cooperation, cyber-security, and
counter-terrorism. The full list (23 dialogues!) includes
some important items, better funded than in the past
but tends to produce glazed eyeballs even among
hardened policy wonks.
The stage was set for this year s discussions,
however, by two actions that had nothing to do with the
actual meetings: the U.S. waiver of potential sanctions on
Indias oil trade with Iran, and the memorandum between
Nuclear Power Corporation of India, Ltd. (NPCIL) and
Westinghouse committing both sides to work towards
early works agreements on things like preliminary
licensing and site development, aiming at an eventual
nuclear power plant in Gujarat. Neither of these actions
eliminates a problem. Secretary Clintons Iran waiver
authority can only be exercised for 180 days at a time.
Indias nuclear liability regime remains a serious problem
for U.S. companies wanting to build power plants in India,
and it is not yet clear that their concerns have been met.
But both provide a sense of progress and temporary relief
from a serious irritant. Both governments showed they
were serious about their relationship.
STRATEGIC START
The strategic significance of this years encounter lies
elsewhere in the increasingly serious consultation the
two governments have undertaken on issues beyond
Indias immediate neighbourhood. The first two topics for
such exchanges were Indian Ocean security, probably the
most important foundation stone for India-U.S. security
ties, and East Asia, which the two sides have been
discussing with considerable sophistication for the past
two years. The joint statement referred to an open,
balanced, and inclusive architecture for Asia, and
expressed U.S. and Indian support for regional forums
that include India, China, Southeast Asia, and the United
States. Translation: neither side contemplates a quasi-
alliance to contain Beijing, but both will remain engaged
together throughout the Asia Pacific region.
These were low-hanging fruit, where the overlap
between U.S. and Indian strategic interests was apparent
to both sides. In the past year, these have been
supplemented by discussions on Afghanistan, West Asia,
and Central Asia. In Afghanistan, the U.S. has long
welcomed Indias economic role, but now also looks on a
carefully calibrated Indian security role as a stabilising
factor. Both countries recognise that as the U.S. gets closer
to its planned withdrawal of combat troops, it will be
essential to deal both with Pakistans relationships inside
Afghanistan and with its extreme anxiety about Indian
103
intentions there. This will complicate the way the U.S. and
India deal with each other on Afghan affairs. But having
defined important common goals, they should be able to
surface any disagreements, hopefully before they become
important obstacles.
STILL MISSING
These are serious steps toward a relationship that
deserves the name strategic. They do not, at least at this
stage, represent the development of joint policies by India
and the U.S., but they are candidates for what one might
call parallel policies, where India and the United States
may be able to proceed independently in ways that
reinforce one another. This is a good way to try out
selective partnership, the only kind of partnership
realistically open to India and the U.S.
If this partnership is to grow and flower, the strategic
discussions need to extend to subjects on which the two
countries have more serious disagreements. The top
candidate is Iran, where they need to embark on a longer-
range discussion about how different contingencies in Iran
would affect the region and the world. This could be
uncomfortable, but candid discussion is essential for two
countries whose vital interests are so powerfully involved.
A more difficult candidate for bilateral candour is
Pakistan, where India and the U.S. have some interests in
common and others that differ. Pakistans high suspicions
of both will be aggravated by any suggestion that they
are colluding on Pakistan policy. Finding the right formula
for a systematic discussion will require unusual delicacy.
ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP
The economic conversation needs a different kind of
help. Bilateral trade in goods and services has now topped
$100 million, and a substantial economic relationship has
helped to keep both governments engaged even at times
when speed bumps threatened the relationship. But a long
list of issues on both countries economic agendas never
seems to go away, as Minister Krishna acknowledged in
a speech to a business group the day before the dialogue.
For the U.S., these include Indias restrictions on foreign
investment, intellectual property and, more recently,
Indias apparent move away from its international tax
treaties. For India, the hardy perennials involve primarily
visa issues. The two governments need to bite the bullet
and settle some of these issues.
Finally, both governments need to find ways of
keeping their leaders directly involved. India and the U.S.
both consider themselves unique countries, and expect
exceptional treatment from their friends. This makes them
peculiarly vulnerable to disappointment when either
government is preoccupied by an election, another
international crisis, or a domestic political challenge, as has
happened to both governments with distressing
frequency in the past year or so.
The standard technique for shoring up high level
attention is using action-forcing events like visits and
meetings to force decisions on stalled issues and focus
leaders attention on a relationship that is important but
not in crisis. This is how the U.S. has made many of its
important decisions on U.S.-India relations in the past
couple of years. It works, but it leaves champions of the
relationship frustrated much of the time. The good news,
however, is that despite our leaders distraction and the
frustration of their advisers, strategic convergence is
gradually being worked into both countries policies.
Courtesy-The Hindu
Rebuilding the Afghan dream
Indias initiative to host the Delhi Investment
Summit on Afghanistan tomorrow is a welcome step
forward in enabling the country to achieve long-term
economic self-reliance, in line with the key objectives of
recent international conferences. The one-day summit
intends to showcase Afghanistans economic potential and
attract foreign investment, while exploring possibilities of
cross-country investment partnerships and collaborative
ventures from within the region and beyond as a regional
and international confidence-building measure.
The daylong discussions should highlight that the
war in Afghanistan is not being waged on the battlefield
alone: if our country, Afghanistan, is to emerge as a strong
and independent democracy, the campaign for
Afghanistans economy must stand on equal footing with
the counterinsurgency campaign. In fact, they are one and
the same.
BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE
We cant build schools during firefights; but without
schools, the firefights will continue. Yet a disproportionate
amount of international resources about 80 per cent of
the aid provided by each contributing country has been
devoted to military operations, at the cost of job creation
and long-term economic development. But it is more jobs
not just more bullets that will persuade militias to lay
down their weapons.
Fortunately, Afghanistan is endowed with natural
resources copper, iron ore, lithium and can finance
its own development, though only if the country receives
the necessary investment and technical assistance from the
international community.
Although Afghanistan has $3 trillion worth of
mineral wealth, we lack the transportation network to
ship these resources to markets.
Building the necessary infrastructure railroads,
highways, processing plants will not only facilitate the
mining industry but also create jobs. A sustainable
livelihood, no matter how small, will immediately weaken
the insurgency and its base, a destitute populace
while a modern transportation network that links
Afghanistan with its neighbours will spur long-term
growth.
OPIUM CULTIVATION
Production of illegal drugs in Afghanistan is another
key problem that can be addressed by economic
development. We know from international experience that
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global demand for narcotics finds ready supply in nations
where governance is weak, instability high and poverty
rampant.
But if Afghanistans agriculture sector were
revitalised, fewer farmers would rely on opium harvesting
a dangerous enterprise to begin with to make a
living. Instead, they could grow wheat, pomegranate,
saffron and high-value crops. As agribusiness becomes
profitable and sustainable, it would drive down the cost
of food for the poor and raise rural incomes, which should
in turn further weaken the insurgency in crucial provinces
like Helmand and Kandahar.
ENERGY NEEDS
Energy is another factor pivotal to earning the trust
of Afghans. Without a comprehensive electricity grid,
Afghanistan can hardly achieve a productive economy.
The availability of electricity can open a very large
market for electronic goods, drastically expanding
consumer consumption. Just as importantly, the Afghan
people could finally reap the benefits of a globalised world
through use of the internet only three per cent of the
population has access to it.
Further, corruption can be stemmed when the abuse
of power is no longer necessary as a means of economic
uplift. Corruption is a symptom, not a cause, of weak
governance, which can be strengthened only when Afghan
civil servants are thoroughly trained and paid competitive
salaries on a sustainable basis. Right now, a driver at an
international non-governmental organisation (NGO) or a
United Nations agency earns at least five times more than
a civil servant working for the Afghan government.
Nor can this situation be improved unless resources
are channelled from aid organisations too many to
count, really directly toward restructuring the Afghan
government into an efficient apparatus of resource
allocation. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John R.
Bolton once argued in the Los Angeles Times that religious
fanatics, and their grievances, do not arise from poverty
or deprivation. To the contrary, many Taliban fighters
join the insurgency simply to earn a living. A significant
number of these rented Taliban can be made to turn
swords into ploughshares if they have alternative
opportunities.
Regional security is closely tied to the nascent
Afghan economy. Without stability, the Taliban will
continue to enjoy widespread support and a base from
which to attack regional interests.
But if the international community relies on military
might alone, how will the outcome in Afghanistan differ
from that of the Americans in Vietnam, the French in
Algeria or the Soviets in Afghanistan?
Militaries alone simply cannot defeat insurgencies.
Courtesy-The Hindu
A crisis of leadership
At the core of the financial crisis in Europe there is a
leadership crisis. Over the weekend, policymakers and
pundits, businessmen and bankers, investors and the lay
public waited to see what Greek voters would say about
remaining in the eurozone. The very fact that crisis
management has to take note of referendums and public
opinion where populist rhetoric and base national
sentiment rather than cool reasoning would shape
perceptions and verdicts makes the world nervous about
Europes leadership vacuum.
Europe is clearly adrift in this gathering storm. At a
meeting of risk analysts in London this week, analysts
from the United States were shocked to encounter what
one called a dangerous mix of complacency and make-
believe. The decision of eurozone finance ministers to
offer a 100 billion euros bailout package to Spain is viewed
as an act of both desperation and bravado. While the
Greeks wonder why Spain gets so much money so easily,
French and Italian leaders are expressing solidarity against
an assertive Germany, and a miffed and hurt German
chancellor says her nation cannot bear too much more of
the burden of the eurozones failure.
It all began in Greece. Few in Europe imagined the
incompetence and dishonesty of Greek economic
managers would bring the entire European project into
question. A mixture of German hubris and southern
European intransigence has snowballed into a crisis of
historical proportions. Few now know what to do. A
senior European leader, presently heading an international
institution, told this writer that what was most frightening
was the absence of a shared narrative in Europe about
the crisis it finds itself in. There is no shared story about
why Europe is where it is. Consequently, there is no
possibility of a shared vision of not just how to move, but
which direction to go in.
Those who still believe in the European project are
viewed either as dreamers or plain crazy. A latter day
Adenauer or De Gaulle may still rescue the Union, but
todays leaders are no match and despite her wisdom and
her patience, Chancellor Angela Merkel does not have a
pan-European following. What gives?
Continent-wide nations require continent-wide
leaders whenever they are in crisis. The idea of Europe,
much like the idea of India was the construction of such
continental leaders. So far, whenever India has faced an
existential crisis it has had the good fortune of having a
leadership in place that was able to take a pan-Indian,
national view and preserve the unity of the whole. Indias
emotional unity also helped in facilitating a pan-Indian
response to different types of crises social, economic or
military in origin.
For todays India, the European situation is an early
warning. When national policy becomes hostage to
regional interests, the federal government becomes
paralysed and would be unable to act in the larger
national interest. Something like this is happening in
Europe. The interests of individual member states have
become impediments to a continent-wide response.
In other words, Europes crisis of confidence has
occurred before the idea of Europe has been able to
strike adequately deep emotional roots. During the Cold
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War, there was emotional cement holding the idea of a
European Union together namely the fear of the
Soviet Union. As the Soviet threat weakened, a new, albeit
economic, threat emerged to keep Europe united
namely the challenge posed by a resurgent Japan. It is
often forgotten that the EU single market project was
essentially a response to the economic threat from Japan
in the 1980s.
One would imagine that a similar threat from China
would keep Europe together. However, as in the Asian
financial crisis so too in the European debt crisis China has
arrived as the benefactor, not the threat. China holds up
the euro and offers financial help to Greece and whoever
else wants it. At a gathering of senior business leaders in
a European capital last week, this writer heard CEO after
CEO refer to China in benign terms, as being still an
opportunity rather than a threat. Most still see the
problem in financial and fiscal terms. Few are as yet willing
to confront the core namely, Europes loss of global
competitiveness. So then, is the European Union history?
Not yet. Despite its inability to act, in time, competently
and with authority, the EU will continue to seek a solution
to its current economic woes within the framework of a
union. However, it has to get its sequencing right. Last
weeks initiative of seeking a banking union amounts to
placing the cart before the horse. Without a fiscal union
and an EU-wide bailout strategy, just a banking union will
have no takers.
The challenge for the EU is to find its Ambedkar. It
needs a constitution that will enable a continental political
leadership to offer continent-wide solutions to a continent-
wide problem. Europe needs emotional unity as much as
it needs a new strategy for generating employment in a
globally competitive way. If this sounds daunting and
impossible, then the EU should return to what many in
Britain prefer a normal single market, like the South
Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA)! A single market with
multiple currencies and sovereign member nations.
Britains Eurosceptics in fact advocate this course. That the
EU should give up the idea of a fiscal and monetary union
and remain just a single market. But that would also imply
the decline of Europe as a geopolitical power.
However, the Euro-enthusiasts, or whoever is left,
still believe that a Greek exit is not going to be such a
major problem, and that the crisis can be contained if
Spain and Italy are not allowed to succumb. Europes
geopolitical enthusiasts will not as yet surrender to the
logic of its geo-economic decline. Hence, a Plan B, that
includes a Greek exit and a move towards a fiscal union
that is limited to a smaller core membership is viewed as
a necessary and credible option. The problem, however,
is that Europe would still desperately need a leadership
that would carry conviction and secure support for such
a Plan B.
Courtesy-The Indian Express
HOME DISADVANTAGE
Last week, the term growth shock was used to
describe the unexpectedly low GDP growth of 5.3 per cent
for the last quarter (January-March) of 2012. The
consensus estimate by most analysts was that the last
quarter would deliver more than 6 per cent growth, at the
very least. As it turned out, the GDP growth came closer
to 5 per cent, a number many economists regard as the
upgraded Hindu rate of growth. Just to refresh memory,
the original Hindu rate of growth, as described by the
economist Raj Krishna, was about 3-3.5 per cent, which
prevailed between 1950 and 1980. So getting close to the
neo Hindu rate of growth (5 per cent), even if for a
quarter, has some shock value. It is also a grim reminder
that the rising India story cannot be taken for granted
against the backdrop of global economic weakness.
Of course, the saving grace is we still managed to get
a GDP growth of 6.5 per cent for the entire fiscal of 2011-
12, even if the last quarter was the worst we had seen in
many years. It was also interesting that Finance Minister
Pranab Mukherjee chose to mention two specific reasons
that might have contributed to the dramatic fall in the GDP
growth of the last quarter. One, the RBI had kept interest
rates too high for too long. Industry, especially small
businesses, has been crying itself hoarse over the high cost
of capital for some time. Fresh private investment virtually
came to a halt as the cost of capital began to make the
critical difference in the decision on making new
investments.
The second reason cited by Mukherjee for the
rapidly slowing growth is the lack of mining clearances.
This is borne out by fresh data suggesting a 0.9 per cent
negative growth in mining output in 2011-12. The only
other time when mining output showed negative growth
was in 1971, when it contracted by 6.9 per cent. How can
you get reasonably high growth when mining output is
declining? For coal, iron ore, aluminium, bauxite and
copper are key industrial inputs.
To be sure, this problem has occupied the mindspace
of policymakers at the highest level for sometime now.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested a year ago
that if coal mining output grew at a meagre 1.5 per cent
then you could not get a GDP growth of 8 per cent plus.
Unfortunately, he diagnosed the problem right but did not
provide a lasting cure. Even now, several coal-mining
clearances remain stalled as the new principal secretary to
the prime minister Pulok Chatterji tries hard to get the
environment ministry to clear them. Given the vitiated
political climate, even Chatterjis efforts are coming
somewhat unstuck.
Lack of decision-making in the bureaucracy, which
began in the wake of various CAG-induced controversies,
is something that is getting worse by the day. Now we
have a CBI inquiry on coal allocations made directly under
the PMOs administration. This, indeed, must be seen as
the last straw on the camels back. If even the prime
minister is perceived to be under scrutiny, the decision-
making process is sure to move from the second gear to
the first, before stalling completely.
To be fair, the decline in mining output, for the first
time since 1971, is also partly due to the large-scale closure
of illegal mines in Karnataka and Goa. Goa Chief Minister
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Manohar Parrikar recently told The Indian Express that he
was, in fact, planning to further reduce mining output in
order to reverse environmental damage. In Karnataka
too, no alternative mechanism has been put in place to
legally revive mining output. These factors, until they get
resolved through a judicial/ democratic process, will have
a negative impact on national output.
These domestic governance issues have combined
with fresh uncertainties in the eurozone to create a double
whammy for the economy. The overall negative
sentiment caused by both domestic and global factors is
making businesses postpone their investments. This is
becoming a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. For instance, in
normal times, businesses start planning fresh investments
once they hit 90 per cent of their existing production
capacity. Based on normal demand projections, they like
to have fresh production facility in place before their
existing capacity reaches 100 per cent. This is also rational
behaviour. They do this based on normal, expected
demand growth trends.
But in times such as these, businesses tend to wait
even after hitting 100 per cent production capacity because
they are not sure about the overall economic climate and
future demand growth. Consequently, they hold back
fresh investments. So the lack of adequate new investment
actually ends up further slowing demand growth. This is
how the self-fulfilling prophecy works. And Indias GDP
growth is roughly 50 per cent consumption-driven and 50
per cent investment-driven. It is now feared that the
investment-led GDP growth is seriously at risk.
It was precisely this domestic investment story that
saved India after the worst global recession in six decades
shook every economy in 2008-09. India had a GDP growth
of 6.8 per cent in 2008-09 after absorbing humongous
financial and economic shocks. So the question then to ask
is why has the Indian economy done worse in 2011-12,
with just 6.5 per cent GDP growth, than in 2008-09, when
the roof seemed to be caving in on us? The answer to this
question is simple. The domestic economy held up and
showed resilience in 2008-09. A recent RBI study says while
real-estate prices collapsed in the Western world and even
declined in Indian metros, the prices in Patna stayed not
only stable but increased in the year after the 2008 global
meltdown. No wonder during 2007-09, Bihar showed an
average GDP growth rate of close to 10 per cent. Other
relatively laggard states such as Orissa, Chhattisgarh,
Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand grew at nearly
7 per cent in the same period. This was the resilience
shown by the underdog state economies after the global
economic crisis of 2008. Are we now losing that
advantage?
While it is true that complex governance issues,
loosely described as policy paralysis, have eroded
confidence in the domestic economy, one cannot
underestimate the role of the massive credit bubble
created by most economies after the 2008 meltdown. The
credit bubble is gradually unwinding everywhere,
including in emerging markets like China, thereby
causing the GDPs of most economies to decelerate by up
to 2 percentage points. This is causing a lot of pain to over-
leveraged businesses whose balance sheets are soaked in
debt. This trend is uniform across all emerging markets.
Only India has worsened its situation a lot more by its
domestic mismanagement of the economy. This is now
reflecting in the Indian currency falling much more against
the dollar than most emerging market currencies over the
past year or so. From here on we can only hope that
things improve so that we can leave the neo Hindu rate
of growth behind. Courtesy-The Indian Express
SCO vs NATO
For Indias foreign policy radicals, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation, whose leaders are meeting this
week in Beijing, is about an undying dream from the past
building an eastern bloc against the West.
But the SCO, as an eastern collective, is unlikely to
measure up to the security challenges that confront it
amidst the Western military retreat from Afghanistan.
Last month in Chicago, the US and its NATO allies
announced an irreversible plan to end Western combat
role in Afghanistan by 2013 and withdraw all but a few
thousand troops from there by the end of 2014.
The US and NATO have indeed offered financial
support to the maintenance of a large Afghan armed force
and continue to assist its economic development. No one,
though, is betting all those promises will be kept.
With America packing its bags in Afghanistan,
shouldnt the SCO move in? Most players in the region
with interest and influence in Afghanistan are all in the
SCO.
Russias involvement in Afghanistan is more than a
century old. China, as the worlds second largest economy
and a giant neighbour, is central to Afghanistans growth
and
future prosperity.
Although Afghanistan is not a member of the SCO,
it has been a special invitee to the recent leadership
summits and might be inducted as an observer this
time.
Two SCO members Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
share long land borders with Afghanistan. Turkmenistan,
the third Central Asian nation on the northern frontiers
of Afghanistan is not a member of the SCO. China is
making amends by inviting it as a special guest for this
weeks summit in Beijing.
Iran, Pakistan and India three other neighbours of
Afghanistan are all observers at the SCO. Turkey, the
rising power in the Middle East, has long taken an interest
in Afghanistan and wants to become a dialogue partner.
DIVIDED ON KABUL
For its part, NATO has signalled a measure of
coherence in Chicago. On Afghanistan, the SCO is
anything but united. Even a cursory look reveals the
multiple fault lines.
Pakistan, which has the greatest influence in
Afghanistan, is locked in a confrontation with the US and
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has blocked Western supply routes into the war zone. Are
the SCO members rallying behind Islamabad? Hardly.
Russia and the Central Asian states have undercut
Pakistans leverage with the West by helping the US by
developing the alternative Northern Distribution Network
to move supplies for the international forces in
Afghanistan. The Central Asian states have just signed a
reverse transit agreement with Washington that would
let the US move out mountains of war equipment
accumulated over the last decade.
The tensions between Kabul and Rawalpindi are of
course central to the current crisis in Afghanistan. The
Pakistan Armys support to the Taliban and the Haqqani
Network undermines the stability of Afghanistan; and
Kabul is desperately looking for any international support
whether from the West or the East to foil
Rawalpindis plots against it.
CHINA PACT
The most interesting outcome from Beijing this
week may not be the collective SCO rhetoric on regional
security, but the specific national action that China might
announce on Afghanistan.
China appears ready to end its passive approach to
Afghanistan. With the West in retreat and Pakistan in
chaos, China is veering towards a more direct role in
Afghanistan.
Reports from Kabul say the Afghan president,
Hamid Karzai, and the Chinese leader, Hu Jintao, will meet
on the margins of the SCO summit and issue a declaration
on establishing a Strategic and Cooperative Partnership.
Official sources in Kabul say the declaration will be
the first step towards the drafting of a strategic
partnership agreement of the kind that Karzai has signed
with many countries including India, the US, Britain,
France, Germany and Australia.
Those in New Delhi who see the world in black and
white or divide it between West and East might find
Afghanistan confusing. Self-preservation at any cost is a
major rule in the Great Game.
If the US is unable to moderate Rawalpindi, why not
try Pakistans all-weather friend, China? After all, China
will still be around after the Americans are gone.
That there are no permanent friends is the other rule.
Looking away from Pakistan, America wants India to play
a bigger role in Afghanistan. Even as he tightens the
American embrace, Karzai is extending a hand to Beijing.
The one missing link is an India-China bilateral dialogue
on Afghanistan.
Presidential Poll
While RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat recently backed
A.P.J. Abdul Kalams candidature for the post of president,
the Sangh Parivars journals have given little importance
to the presidential elections while the BJP-led NDA
remains divided on its next course of action. The RSS
weekly Panchjanya used the presidential elections as a
backdrop to attack the Congress president. The Organiser
gave prominence to an article criticising Sonia Gandhi, the
Congress high command. Incidentally, both pieces
made personal attacks against Gandhi.
While the Organiser, in an article titled UPA and
unmitigated disaster for India: undermining India, Sonia
style, attacked Sonia Gandhi, a Panchjanya editorial
Rahul Gandhi ke liye bichhayi Sonia ne bisat (Sonia sets
the chess board for Rahul Gandhi) contended that
Kalams role in spiking her alleged prime ministerial
ambitions after the 2004 Lok Sabha elections still
rankles Gandhi, which is why she wants a president
who will set aside all democratic norms to facilitate her
son Rahul Gandhis coronation after a fractured verdict
in 2014.
While the Panchjanya editorial was written when the
UPA meeting to decide upon Pranab Mukherjees
candidature was still happening, the editorial highlights
the crucial role of the next president in the formation of
next government after the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
KASHMIR AND QUOTAS
Even in the midst of the tussle over the presidential
election, the Sangh Parivar weeklies have written about
the minority sub-quota and the interlocutors report on
Jammu and Kashmir, indicating their fierce opposition to
both. The Panchjanya has a front page article regarding
the Supreme Courts refusal to stay the Andhra high
courts verdict striking down the 4.5 per cent minority sub-
quota. Calling the SCs refusal a slap on the face of the
government, the article reports that VHP leader Praveen
Togadia demanded that the government tender an
apology for instituting a sub-quota in the name of religion.
The Organiser also prominently displayed Togadias
demand in its latest issue. The Organiser also reported RSS
chief Mohan Bhagwats assertion that the interlocutors
report on J&K spoke the language of the anti-national
elements active in Kashmir for decades.
ON THE RADAR
Barely three months into his tenure as the youngest
chief minister of the politically crucial state of Uttar
Pradesh, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh
Yadavs son Akhilesh Yadav appears to have attracted the
attention of the Sangh Parivar. A special report in the
Organiser has faulted Akhilesh for his alleged overdrive
on (the) communal agenda. The article cites two of
Akhileshs moves hosting a dinner for Imam-e-Haram
Sheikh Khalid Bin Ali al Ghamdi of the Kaaba and his
decision to seek a fresh report on the accused in the
Lucknow and Faizabad court blasts in 2007 as major
developments that have reinforced the Sangh Parivars
assessment of his supposedly communal agenda.
A question of trust
Two regulators read the riot act on Thursday, pulling
up companies that may have strayed from norms. The
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Competition Commission of India slapped fines worth Rs
6,300 crore, the highest ever, on 10 cement companies, and
the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has
warned mutual funds that have underperformed for over
three years at a stretch. The cement companies are
expected to petition the appellate tribunal while no real
steps have been taken against mutual funds, so nothing
dramatic is about to happen right away. But the message
is clear: when required, oversight agencies will speak up
in the interest of the economy and the investors who drive
it. Sebi has threatened to go beyond fund managers and
chief executives and question even the directors or
trustees of underperforming asset management
companies.
Pending appeal, the cement companies stand
accused of cartelising to underuse installed capacity, reduce
production and thus make a killing in times of high
demand. It is a serious charge because there are
implications for growth and development and the apex
industry body, the Cement Manufacturers Association,
has been pulled up for serving as a platform for the cartel
instead of blowing the whistle on it. The case of
underperforming funds is slightly different, since investors
have competing options to turn to. However, Sebi has
noted that 18 asset management companies have schemes
routinely performing below their benchmarks and
investing in a manner that violates concentration norms
and amounts to conflict of interest. The regulator has also
sought the governments permission to use call record
data as evidence in insider trading cases and is working on
guidelines for IPOs to protect investors. Perhaps this is
inspired by the insider trading case that has just been
closed in New York, in which Rajat Gupta was nailed by
phone records.
The Harshad Mehta and Ketan Parekh scams had
taught the government that liberalisation would lose
public confidence in the absence of strong regulation and
oversight. Now, we are perhaps entering the second phase
of regulation, with agencies trying to build up a regime of
best practices, and doing so transparently. Antitrust and
competition law has been a crucial enabling feature of
markets in the US and the EU. Targets of action have
included major corporations like Microsoft, AT&T,
Standard Oil, France Telecom and Deutsche Post. Now,
Indian agencies are not hesitating to draw attention to
what is wrong in prime sectors of the economy. It is a
healthy move that will increase investor confidence.
A new beginning
For a government with its back to the wall and
pretty much nowhere to go, its time to simply get on with
it. Now that the Parliaments budget session is over, the
presidential candidate has been announced and the next
round of state elections is still some way off, the
government is beginning to show some signs of shaking
off the policy slumber. On the issue of allowing FDI in
multibrand retail, Commerce and Industry Minister
Anand Sharma has stepped up efforts to build a broad-
based consensus by writing to the chief ministers of three
non-Congress states Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Punjab.
The Centre is trying to emphasise the point that
while individual states are well within their rights to not
implement the policy in their respective jurisdictions, the
rights of states that find merit in this policy must be
respected. While the cabinet had last year cleared the
proposal to allow 51 per cent FDI in multibrand retail, stiff
resistance from the Trinamool Congress put paid to the
governments plans. While a broad-based consensus looks
tough without taking on board key allies, the appeal for
a healthy bipartisan consensus on multibrand retail makes
absolute sense as unwilling states have the option of
staying out and watching from the sidelines how those
choosing to implement it are faring. The commerce
minister has already wrapped up consultations with
stakeholders, including farmers associations, traders,
consumer organisations, industry leaders and economists.
Broadly, the battlelines have been drawn, with the kirana
stores on one side and farmers and consumers on the
other the latter two seen as the biggest gainers from
the move. Also, states such as West Bengal that are
unwilling to play ball will face off against a long list of
supporters, including opposition-ruled Gujarat and Punjab
that have indicated tacit or even overt support to the
proposal. With multi-brand retail majors waiting in the
wings for the sector to open up, the logical thing to do is
to allow willing states to go ahead.
On balance, the benefits of further opening the retail
market far outweigh the costs, perceived or otherwise.
And a positive decision on FDI in retail could give the
Centre the stomach to push through other key pending
reforms and be the trigger for the image makeover the
government so desperately needs.
Reimagine the exam
This years round of college admissions have seen
cut-offs in Delhi University soaring to an incredible 99 per
cent for several courses. This is not surprising, given the
astronomical marks that many students have scored in
their class 12 boards. But the clamour around results and
admissions throws into sharp relief the structure and
content of an examination system that awards such marks.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)
recently announced proposals to change the format of the
final board examinations. It wants to transform the
structure of question papers and the nature of questions.
News reports mention that this is in response to the
Ministry of Human Resource Developments unhappiness
with the current system, which only encourages rote
learning. But examination reform has been the theme
song of many official policy documents. It is therefore
necessary to view the CBSEs move in the larger context
of testing and evaluation of school students.
Examination has become an inescapable part of our
educational life. Its place and legitimacy in education has
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never been questioned. Public examinations, such as the
one conducted at the end of the 12th grade, draw a mix
of praise and criticism. It is argued that they provide
objective, fair, public criteria for selection. But they have
also been accused of overloading students with
memorising information, depersonalising schooling,
discouraging creativity and supporting credentialism. The
following observation aptly characterises the current
system of public examinations: The examinations today
dictate the curriculum instead of following it, prevent any
experimentation, hamper the proper treatment of subjects
and sound methods of teaching, foster a dull uniformity
rather than originality, encourage the average pupil to
concentrate too rigidly on too narrow a field, thus help
him to develop wrong values in education. Pupils assess
education in terms of success in examinations. Strange
that this was stated by the Mudaliar Commission in 1952.
Reforms in the past have focused on the mechanics
of conducting examinations, not on the content and
purposes. Switching from essay type questions to
objective type questions is one such. The common refrain
is that this has made the conduct of examinations a
bureaucratic phenomenon, not a professional one. With
fixed answers and predetermined model answers even for
questions where children have to write phrases and
sentences, the job can be done mechanically, making the
professional capability of a teacher redundant.
In reality, school boards have tried to do away with
all complexities of learner evaluation. Objectivity in the
public eye is the sole criterion. The CBSE proposal to
reintroduce essay type questions and reduce dependence
on memorisation is a welcome step. Remember that this
is supposed to evaluate the learners accomplishments in
12 long years of schooling. Ideally, one should profile the
trajectory of each students progress. This can be done
only by those who teach children over the years. Will the
proposed change lead the public to repose their faith again
in the teachers ability to be objective and professional in
evaluating their students?
The current proposal by the CBSE must be seen in
conjunction with another reform recently introduced by
the board Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation
(CCE), giving weightage to school-based assessment by
teachers. What is intended, what is understood by the
teachers and what happens in reality the three could be
at variance with one another. Synchronising the three
cannot be done through official notifications. But public
examinations and admission tests have assumed so much
importance that schools are under pressure to prepare the
students to face them rather than focusing on personal
growth. Strangely, the public seems to have greater
confidence in external examinations than in assessment by
teachers. Historically, the imperial administration
organised state-controlled examinations to project in the
public mind an image of British justice and impartiality. In
the system of education established by them, while Indians
were included as teachers, their role as evaluators was
grossly underplayed. It was considered necessary to have
examinations conducted by outsiders, preferably British.
Have we overcome this colonial hangover? Continuous
undermining of the role of teachers has led to the erosion
of their credibility as evaluators. Public perception of poor
accountability and teachers indifference has accentuated
this. In this context, efforts like the CCE under the Right
to Education Act and the CBSEs move to include internal
assessment in the board results must be recognised. But
will schools and teachers implement the policy sincerely
and adopt credible practices? This alone will decide the
survival of these new initiatives.
Evaluation, like teaching, must be a human contract
between student and teacher, between society and the
educational institution. But our examination system has
taken away the human face of education. For the millions
who fail to make the grade, school or college is an
experience they would rather forget. Bringing back this
human face requires many changes in the examination
establishment. Examination has to become a creative
phenomenon, not a routine mechanical one and teachers
have to regain their role as credible evaluators.
Patent silliness
Apple has won this round, as a US court blocked
Samsungs Galaxy Tab 10.1 on the grounds that it
infringed Apples design patent, and held up the validity
of the patent. In the last few years, companies like Apple,
Samsung, Microsoft and Motorola have been warring
bitterly, at great expense, across jurisdictions, over their
products and features. Two recent rulings had suggested
a measure of sanity in the Smartphone patent wars
federal judge Richard Posner put a decisive end to the
two-year squabble between Apple and Motorola Mobility
(now owned by Google), denying both an injunction on
the others sales, saying that neither has shown that
damages would not be an adequate remedy. Only
recently, Oracles lawsuit against Google, for having
cloned application programme interfaces used by Java to
build its Android platform, had been dismissed entirely.
Software qualifies for both patent and copyright
protection and patent-litigation has now become a
cumbersome, innovation-sapping exercise. Each company
amasses an arsenal of patents, and there is an entire
industry of patent trolls, whose sole occupation is to search
for evidence of any infringement. Every tiny little feature,
like slide to unlock or an inbuilt spell-check, has been
declared Apples own, which it zealously seeks to guard
from Samsungs predations. While some of these may be
genuinely new, the idea of owning the spell-check in this
day and age is absurd. Besides, it turns its face against the
very nature of technological advance imitating and
bettering. The patents skirmishes are, of course, business
by another name. These legal injunctions are meant to
keep the competitors products off the market until they
lose that space altogether. For the time being, the war
over intellectual property is going to be as vigorous as the
competition to develop the next new thing.
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Speedy Thorat
The six-member committee appointed by HRD
Minister Kapil Sibal to examine the content of NCERT
textbooks for educationally inappropriate material may
have failed in its very purpose by delivering its report in
just 45 days. After all, the institution of the committee was
created as a procrastinatory tool to give governments
some breathing room. Mostly, a committee is set up not
to actually investigate an issue but to put it on ice until it
has faded from public memory. Yet, look closer, and it
may be understandable why the Thorat committee has
moved with such striking efficiency. It may even be part
of a larger pattern: this government, which is not exactly
fleet of foot on issues that matter, moves pretty rapidly
on questions that have an illiberal outcome.
The UPA government has gone full throttle, for
instance, for retrograde policies like retrospective taxation
and draconian rules that accompany the IT Act. It
enthusiastically rushed off in the wrong direction in May,
when objections were raised in Parliament about a cartoon
featuring B.R. Ambedkar on the grounds that it allegedly
offended caste sensibilities. The moment the cartoon
controversy was hijacked by identity politics, Kapil Sibal
issued an apology in the House. Within hours, the usually
cautious Pranab Mukherjee surprised everyone by
declaring that the cartoon should not have been included
in a school textbook. Incidentally, a group of MPs had
expressed strong displeasure at many more cartoons of
political figures in school texts. Now, the committees
report cements that illiberal position. The committee, led
by S.K. Thorat, ICSSR chairman, former UGC chairman
and an authority in Dalit studies, has recommended large-
scale changes in textbooks, including the removal of over
20 cartoons. The best that can be said of its exertions is that
they have been speedy. In fact, the government has set a
dangerous precedent. Would it now set up a committee
every time someone is offended? And would questions
that ought to be discussed in Parliament and in the public
domain be referred to committees that meet behind
closed doors? That would only deepen the silence that
censorship seeks to produce.
The Health Care Decision:
Deliverance or Disaster?
The Supreme Courts decision abounds with legal
and political ironies. Foremost, and central to the result,
is the majoritys conclusion that the individual mandate is
a legitimate exercise of Congresss power to tax. During
the legislative debate, the President and his allies were
adamant that the mandate was absolutely not a tax. Had
they marketed this provision as a tax, the bill would surely
not have passed. So the Supreme Court saved the
signature legislative achievement of the Obama
Administration precisely because it was not what the
Administration said it was.
When the case got to court, the Administration
invoked the federal Anti-Injunction Act, which bars suits
to restrain the collection of any tax. The government
argued that this law precluded the challenge to the
mandate. So if the mandate was, indeed, a tax, this law
would have made the case dead on arrival. But in
examining this provision, the court held that the mandate
was not, after all, a tax; it was just what Congress called
it, a penalty. The choice of labels, the court said, cannot
control as to whether the law is constitutional but does
control as to whether the tax anti-injunction law applies.
When I use a word, the court, like Humpty Dumpty, said,
it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor
less.
The magic of this dueling taxonomy of the word
mandate meant that because it is a penalty, the court could
go forward to consider its legality, but because it is a tax
and not a penalty, it is a lawful exercise of Congresss
taxing power, not an unlawful regulation of commerce as
the dissenters asserted. Like Marbury v. Madison 200
years ago, in which the Supreme Court held that it had the
power to decide whether laws were constitutional, this
court exercised that power after dispensing with a
provision that would have denied to the court the power
to do so in the first place. If it was a tax, the court could
not have upheld the tax. But because it was a penalty, it
was lawful as a tax. Chief Justice Roberts has learned a
thing or two from his legendary predecessor Chief Justice
Marshall.
Yet another irony is that five Justices decided that
Congress did not have the power under the commerce
clause to regulate doing nothing not buying health
insurance. But five Justices (only Chief Justice Roberts in
both camps) held that Congress does have the power to
impose a tax for doing the same nothing.
Our constitutional law professor President, who
insisted that Obamacare was constitutional, was right all
along. But he was right because he was wrong. He was
right that it was constitutional because he was wrong that
it was not a tax. He either doesnt know his constitutional
law that well or his politics counseled not sharing that
wisdom with Congress voting on the measure.
The political irony is that the individual mandate is
widely unpopular and will become more so when small
businesses and individuals start to pay for it and when the
tax man comes collecting the penalty (i.e., tax) from the
uninsured. On the other hand, solving the health care crisis
is something the public does want. If Obamacare had been
struck down, the Presidents re-election campaign would
have targeted the five evil Republicans on the Supreme
Court, as he signaled with his outburst challenging the
court shortly after his team faced rough sledding in the
courts oral argument. His campaign was already
fashioning a direct challenge to Mitt Romney and
Republicans in Congress to come up with their solution to
the health care crisis before the election. A virtually
impossible and highly perilous political course.That avenue
is now foreclosed. So by winning his case in court, the
President now has to defend an unpopular law that he
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secured by misrepresenting what it was. And he cannot
attack Republicans for not offering a solution because his
solution is now the law. He got what he wished for.
So President Obama may have lost by winning and
might have won had he lost. One gets a sense from the
White House spin after the argument that there was a
secret longing that the court would take the bait and do
precisely what the President was, in a sense, daring it to
do. Chief Justice Roberts did not bite.
Finally, the rejoicing by liberals may be short-lived.
Their version of federal power was vindicated but only if
they want to enact politically unpopular taxes. On the
other hand, five Justices significantly reined in federal
power to regulate commerce and, in another part of the
courts opinion, to exercise power under the spending
clause. These authorities are much easier politically to
exercise in Congress; unfunded mandates are one of the
preferred ways of taxing in sheeps clothing. The courts
decision, while reaffirming authority that is hard to use,
restricted authority that is easier to use. Like the President,
they may have lost by winning.
Courtesy-Time
Indian Plate Movement
Earthquake and Tsunami
Risk Zones
The Indian plate, separated from the Antarctic,
started moving to the north northeast about 180 million
years ago. The present day movement of the Indian plate
from the Carlsberg spreading ridge results in collision in
the Himalaya and subduction in the Andaman-Sumatra.
These plate margins, therefore are the major seismic belts
of the moving Indian plate.
The concept of plate tectonics is the most satisfying
explanation for a majority of earthquakes. The basic idea
of plate tectonics involves earths outermost part, the
lithosphere (100-200 km thick), which consists of several
large and fairly stable slabs - the plates. Boundaries of
these plates are the seismic belts of the world. At the mid
oceanic ridges, up welling of lava is a continual process.
This molten rock creates new sea floor on either side of
the ridge and these mid-oceanic ridges thus constitute the
spreading zones of the earth or divergent plate
boundaries.
Since the earths size remains the same over a long
period of geological time, the moving plates must be
absorbed at some places. The burial grounds of plates -
the convergent plate boundaries, are believed to be the
ocean trenches, where the plates plunge into the earths
interior. This process is known as subduction - as happens
along the Andaman-Sumatra trench, the Japan trench, the
Chile trench and so on (Fig 2a). The other type of
convergent plate boundary forms the continent-continent
collision zone - as happens in the Himalaya, where the
Indian plate is on a head-on collision with the Eurasian
plate (Fig 2b). A third type is the transcurrent boundary,
where the plates move past one another - as happens
along the San Andreas (California) fault between the
Pacific and the North American plate.
INDIAN PLATE MOVEMENT
The Indian plate, separated from the Antarctic,
started moving towards the north northeast about 180
million years ago. About 55 million years ago it made
contact with the Eurasian plate, and the head on collision
started (Fig 1). The present topography map shows the
effects of this head on collision with lofty, still rising
Himalaya and the abyssal Andaman-Sumatra trench in the
Indian oceanic plate. The present day movement of the
Indian plate from the Carlsberg spreading ridge results in
collision in the Himalaya and subduction in the
Andaman-Sumatra. Understandably these plate margins
are the major seismic belts of the moving Indian plate.
INDIAN PLATE EARTHQUAKES
Seismic network
After the devastating 1897 great Shillong
earthquake, the first seismological observatory in India
was established in Alipore (Kolkata) in 1898 by the India
Meteorological Department (IMD). Substantially precise
epicentral earthquake data became available from 1964
onwards with the inception of the World Wide
Seismograph Station Network (WWSSN) and more
seismograph stations (about 15 by 1960) in the national
network. The WWSSN was upgraded to the Global
Standard Network (GSN) with digital instruments in the
1980s. These data are available on the United States
Geological Survey (USGS) website almost in real time. Post
1993 Latur earthquake, the national network was further
upgraded with a denser and digital seismic network. Now
about 100 permanent stations and several telemetric
networks are run by different organisations, institutes and
universities in the country.
GENERAL SEISMICITY
The general seismicity map of India shows intense
seismic activity all along the Himalayan collision zone,
Indo-Burma ranges and along the Andaman-Sumatra
subduction zone. It is argued that the Andaman-Sumatra
subduction zone is extends beneath the Indo-Burma
ranges. The meeting zone of the Himalayan and the Indo-
Burma arcs is named Assam syntaxis. The earthquakes in
the Himalayan collision zone and in the syntaxis zone are
shallower (< 80 km), whereas the earthquakes in the Indo-
Burma-Andaman-Sumatra subduction zone are deeper,
down to 300 km within the subducted Indian plate (Kayal,
2008). The earthquakes in the middle of the plate, away
from the plate margins, are called intra plate earthquakes;
these are infrequent and much shallower (< 50 km).
LARGE AND GREAT EARTHQUAKES
Locations of the large (M~7.0) and great earthquakes
(M~8.0) in the continental part of the Indian plate are
shown in Fig 3. These earthquakes follow the Himalayan
mountain belt and the Indo-Burma ranges; except one
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great and one large intra plate earthquakes in the Kutch
area of Gujarat. Among the few intra-plate damaging
strong earthquakes (M~6.0), 1923 Satpura, 1967 Koyna,
1993 Latur and 1997 Jabalpur earthquakes are worth
mentioning. Two more large or strong intra plate
earthquakes, 1720 Delhi and 1919 Gujarat, are reported in
the historical catalogue, but their magnitudes are not well
ascertained.
SEISMIC HAZARDS AND RISK MITIGATION
Seismic hazards still fresh in their crescendo are the
1993 Latur (M 6.3) and the 2001 Bhuj earthquake (M 7.7),
with an enormous loss of lives of over 10,000-20,000
persons. The loss of so many lives in the Latur earthquake
was also attributable to poorly built houses made of
boulders and mud. On the contrary there were no
casualties among those who lived in the bamboo-thatch
and in the well built concrete houses. The lesson to be
learnt is that technique and material used play a significant
role in withstanding the impact of an earthquake.
The great earthquakes (M~8.0) of the Himalayan
region, 1897 Shillong, 1905 Kangra, 1934 Bihar/Nepal and
1950 Assam syntaxis and plateau resulted in the loss of
about 30,000 lives - but if such an event were to occur
today, it would lead to much higher casualties.
Unprecedented growth of population in the Himalaya
coupled with earthquake non-resistant housing are the
chief drivers of this situation. For example, a large
number of earthquake non resistant multi-storied brick
houses are being built in and around Shillong, which has
already experienced a devastating earthquake (M~8.7) in
1897. In fact, it is not the earthquake, but the poorly built
houses and ignorance that kills people.
Crustal deformation studies through improved
instrumentation show that the Himalayan segment is
ready for a large/great earthquake at any time. It may be
mentioned here that about 30 years ago loss of lives in the
developed and developing countries was almost of the
same order. But today the loss of human life due to a large
earthquake in a developed country like Japan has been
minimised drastically, whereas it has been enhanced over
100 times in countries like ours.
Seismic hazard or risk mitigation is a challenging task
in our disaster mitigation programme. Since successful
prediction of an earthquake with specific time, space and
magnitude is yet to be achieved or understood, the first
and foremost task to mitigate disaster should be to follow
the building code based on the seismic zoning map of
India (Fig 4) and using available maps on microzonation
in the urban cities (Fig 5). Such maps identify the most
vulnerable pockets of seismic hazards/damages,
susceptible to ground amplification or liquefaction.
Therefore older buildings in such pockets need retrofitting
and newer ones need special construction designs (Fig. 5).
Also authorities should decommission permits for making
new habitations in danger proneas.
LARGE AND GREAT EARTHQUAKES IN THE OCEAN
A large part of the oceanic plate of India, subducting
beneath the Andaman-Sumatra trench has produced
several large and great earthquakes in the past, some of
which generated destructive tsunamis. Largest among
them are the historical earthquakes that occurred in 1833
(M~8.7); 1861 (M~8.5); 1881 (M 7.9) and 1941 (M 7.7) (Fig
6). While these large earthquakes ruptured only a few
hundreds of kilometres (~200-300) of the plate boundary,
the 2004 Sumatra mega thrust earthquake (M 9.3)
ruptured more than 1300 km of the arc, stripping the
regions that were ruptured in the past as well as the
intervening unbroken patches, and generated the
devastating tsunami that snuffed out the lives of nearly 2
lakh people living along the southern coasts of India and
southeast Asia. The energy release of M 8.0 is equivalent
to about 100 million atom bombs, while the energy
release of an earthquake of M 9.0 is equivalent to the
occurrence of 30 great earthquakes of M 8.0 at one time.
The other tsunamigenic zone is in the Arabian Sea
where there is a record of a great earthquake (M~8.0)
south of the Makran coast in 1945, at the Makran
subduction zone. This event generated a destructive
tsunami killing about 4,000 people along the coast of
Pakistan, Iran, Oman and north western coast of India.
TSUNAMI RISK AND HAZARD MITIGATION
A tsunami warning system monitors the occurrence
of any tsunamigenic earthquake in the sea, and can predict
the arrival of the tsunami to the coast. The time interval
between the occurrence of earthquake and the arrival of
tsunami depends on the distance from the source to the
coast, which may vary from couple of minutes at the
Andaman-Sumatra islands to a few hours at the east coast
of India. A tsunami warning system is now established by
the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services
(INCOIS), Hyderabad, that records the real time
telemetric-observations of the tsunamigenic earthquakes
in the sea. The tsunami warning system of the INCOIS is
working well. The other steps for the tsunami hazard
mitigation could be to avoid habitation within 500 m of the
coastline, and also by mangrove plantation at the coast to
break the sea waves.
IN CONCLUSION
The seismicity and seismic source zones in and
around the Indian plate are well understood with available
seismological data. However the data source is too limited
for accurate space, time and magnitude prediction of
earthquakes. Although high precision instrumental data
being recorded since the last few decades will enable
future understanding of the recurrence period of a large
or great earthquake for 100 to 1000 years depending on
the source zone and tectonic stress accumulation - its
present window period is too narrow for prediction.
Coastal zones of India, a long stretch of the east
coast and a small stretch of the west coast, are prone to
tsunami hazards. These hazards can be mitigated
efficiently with the tsunami warning system. Also general
awareness and preparedness is vital for natural hazards
like earthquakes and/or tsunamis. A case in point is a
young girl from UK holidaying in Phuket (Thailand) who
113
interpreted the abnormal ebb in the sea water accurately
on 26 December 2004 and raised the alarm to save herself
and hundreds of others. On the contrary people along the
Indian coast waited to watch the sharply receding waters
and lost their lives.
Natural hazards, particularly earthquakes, can
neither be stopped nor be precisely predicted. In case we
do predict that a large earthquake would occur in a
heavily populated city such as Delhi or Kolkata within the
next 15 days or say within a month - would that entail
total evacuation for a month? Further, even if the loss of
lives were minimised would damage to habitations be
taken care of? We, therefore, should learn to live with
earthquakes and combat them with disaster proof
structures coupled with preparedness.
Courtesy-Geography & You
A Stinging Indictment of Indias
Drug Regulation Authority
The Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation is
expected to protect the citizen from the marketing of
harmful pharmaceuticals. The findings of the 59th report
of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and
Family Welfare are an expose of the shockingly lax
standards followed by this so-called standards
organisation, the casual approach taken in certifying drugs
for sale, and the unethical and illegal steps taken by some
pharmaceutical companies and medical practitioners in
pushing for the introduction of certain drugs in the
market. Can and will the government act?
The 59th Report of the Department-Related
Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family
Welfare is a stinging indictment of the state of affairs in the
Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation
(CDSCO). The report deals with problems specific to
regulation of modern medicine

and is probably the tip of
the iceberg.
STRUCTURAL ISSUES IN CDSCO
The status report of the CDSCO says its mission is to
meet the aspirations demands and requirements of the
pharmaceutical industry. The CDSCO seems to have got
all its priorities wrong: For decades together it has been
according primacy to the propagation and facilitation of
the pharma industry, due to which, unfortunately, the
interest of the biggest stakeholder, i e, the consumer has
never been ensured (Para 2.2 of the report).
In contrast, the stated missions of drug regulatory
authorities of developed countries explicitly talk of
protecting/safeguarding public health by assuring the
safety, efficacy, and security of humans involved.
Disservice to the consumer and neglect of public health
goals have a boomerang effect in the long term. Complicit
in this are Indias pharmaceutical companies with their
penchant for making unessential, harmful medicines and
irrational Fixed Dose Combinations (FDCs). Also complicit
in this is the medical profession. Why have the leading
elites of the medical profession been quiet especially
those in p ositions of power? The patient has no choice in
the matter.
The report comes down heavily on equating B
Pharms with MDs in pharmacology and/or microbiology.
And says that the latter, and the pool they come from,
should be given preference for appointment to the job of
the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI). Well,
Hobsons choice really. One of the best commissioners of
the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) in Maharashtra was
an IAS o fficer, Arun Bhatia, but shunted out soon because
of his effectiveness. At the helm, we need persons of vision
with an understanding of the importance of evidence-
based medicine in public health and curative healthcare, as
well as an understanding of the general progress of science
of medicine, pharmacology and pharmaceutics these
may be found in a wide range of associated disciplines. An
understanding of the political economy of the pharma
industry certainly would help. What will not help is a
tendency to go along with pharma industry propaganda
or medical fashions. There is also a case for making the
CDSCO an independent drug authority like the Indian
Space Research Organisation and the like, with the DCGI
being given Government of I ndia secretary level status.
REGULATORY ANARCHY
The part of the report (Para 7 onwards) on issues
related to drug approvals and withdrawal of medicines,
banned and ought to be banned, should give sleepless
nights to the CDSCO and the Ministry of Health.
The CDSCO had approved 2,167 medicines from
January 2001 to 30 November 2010. Files of three
medicines from a randomly chosen list of 42 medicines
out of the 2,000 plus recently approved medicines were
not traceable. These medicines pefloxacin, lomefloxacin
and sparfloxacin also happen to be controversial. All
three medicines are sold in India but not sold in any of the
countries with well-developed regulatory bodies. Of the
remaining 39 drugs, the committee found the following
problems: In the case of 11 medicines, Phase 3 trials were
not conducted. In the case of four approved medicines,
neither Phase 3 trials were conducted nor expert opinion
sought. In some cases, drug trials were not conducted on
the legally r equired minimum of 100 patients. Or were
conducted only at two hospitals as against at three to four
sites, the legal requirement. Out of the sample of 39
approved medicines, 13 (33%) of the medicines were not
permitted for sale in the US, Canada, Britain, EU and
Australia. These 13 medicines, that included 10 irrational
FDCs, are not relevant to Indias medical needs. In the
case of 25 medicines (64%), expert medical opinion was not
sought before approval. In those cases (14 out of 39)
where medical opinion was sought it was restricted to
three to four experts. Medical opinion that is given, either
for or against, is not easily accessible let alone in the public
domain on a website. The general public has a right to
know who said what.
Between January 2008 and October 2010, 33
medicines were approved without any clinical trial. One
thus does not know anything about their safety and
114
efficacy. Granted that the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1945
and especially Schedule Y of the rules (especially 122A,
122B, 122D, 122DA, 122DAA and 122E) contain several
clinical trial waiver clauses. But they are to be waived in
the case of emergency (say swine flu and H1N1 vaccine)
or in public interest. None of these 33 medicines fell under
these categories of emergency or public interest.
The DCGI also cleared trial sites for Phase 3 without
application of mind as to whether they represent the
needed ethnic diversity. The committee recommends an
increase in number of persons accordingly to take into
account ethnic diversity. We comment on this later.
Medical opinions sought from experts appeared to
have become a farcical exercise. Opinions were given in a
subjective fashion without citation of any hard scientific
evidence. Also the letters of many of the experts read
almost verbatim (Para 7.31), which leads one to suspect
that the whole process was considered a mere formality
with the expert appending his/her signature on the draft
supplied by the pharma company, the saving grace being
the letterheads were their own! In the case of an FDC of
acelofenac and drotaverine, not permitted in any country
in North America, a CDSCO official advised the
manufacturer Themis Medicare, to select experts, get the
approval letters written and send them to the DCGI. Of
course they were all in identical language. The official and
the company, and the experts, in this case as in others,
need to be taken to task for the unholy nexus. Doctors
complicit in the charade of giving opinions may be
deprived of their degrees or right to practice for a given
period for violating their codes of ethics.
Experts chosen were conveniently based in Delhi, in
a vast country with 7,00,000 doctors, without checking
whether their experience was relevant to the particular
class of drugs (One wonders whether expertise on
medicines is confined to Delhi, Para 8.10). And of course
there was no checking out whether there were any
conflicts of interest. Specifically the committee took the
CDSCO to task for illegal approval of four drugs: Buclizine
approved without clinical trials and consideration of its
effects on children; letrozole (a breast cancer medicine
approved also for infertility in women without any Phase
2 studies since banned by the DCGI for use in fertility);
FDC of flupenthixol and melitracen (Deanxit), a medicine
prohibited for sale and use in Denmark in the country of
its origin and approved in India in violation of Rule 30B
of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act; and illegal approval of
new indications of placental extract gel (new indications
and new formulation mean it is a new drug as per Rule
122E(b) but the same was not treated as a new drug
clinical trials were therefore not requisitioned). The
ministry/CDSCO is expected to give a reply by 8 July on
action taken on erring officials, retired since or serving,
who were responsible for approval of these four drugs.
A move that is likely to deter mindless approvals for some
time at least.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS
The committee goes on to make other important
observations and recommendations:
(1) Remove unauthorised FDCs (those approved by
state authorities, without clinical trials and without
prior clearance from the CDSCO, in spite of being
new drugs as per Rule 122E(c)). The powers in the
Drugs and Cosmetics Act under Section 33P and
Section 26A are sufficient to remove all such FDCs,
especially ones having combination of antibacterials
that have the possibility of increasing drug resistance
(Para 9.8).
(2) Transparent criteria for selection of persons for Drug
Advisory Committees and from all over the country
(Para 10.2).
(3) Remove confusion over near sounding and similar
brand names. A database of all brand name
medicines with their ingredients should be made
available on the CDSCO website (Para 11.2).
(4) Insist on pharma companies to send India-specific
Periodic Safety Update Reports (PSURs) as part of
post-marketing surveillance. PSURs were available
for only eight of the 42 medicines randomly selected
(Paras 12.2 to 12.6).
(5) Phase 4 studies to be conducted for detecting adverse
effects in lieu of the ineffectiveness of pharmaco-
vigilance programmes (existing and planned) (Para
13.3).
(6) Constant updating of information on medicines
already marketed. Manufacturers have obligations
as per law to provide such information and they
need to be penalised as per rules for non- updating
of information (Para 14.3).
(7) Stringent punishment for those res ponsible for
spurious and substandard drugs. And penal
provisions also for manufacturing misbranded and
adulterated drugs may be considered (Para 15.6).
(8) Appropriate action on companies that have
advertised Schedule H medicines in lay press. Sharper
teeth to the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Para 16.2).
(9) Consumer information on medicines in all major
languages at the click of a mouse.
(10) Issues related to clinical trials of medicines would be
taken up for separate detailed examination by the
committee (Para 18.2).
THE ROAD AHEAD
On Quality: The report makes several
recommendations regarding shortage of staff, laboratory
facilities in the states, etc. We believe these are being
addressed in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan and so we will
await implementation.
The burgeoning pharma sector generates its own
pressures on medicine regulation. No amount of increase
in resources and laboratories is going to ensure quality
because the supply of laboratories and facilities would not
be able to keep up with the demand for regulatory
oversight. Therefore the achievement of quality must be
enabled in other ways also. We would suggest that the
parameters of good quality, good manufacturing practices
and good clinical and storage practices are spelt out in a
transparent way that can be interpreted and implemented
115
without ambiguity. Second, manufacturers found willfully
making substandard, misbranded and/or spurious drugs
must be tried in special drug courts to expedite matters in
a competent manner. There is a demand for capital
punishment in some quarters, a kind of overreach this
writer does not agree to. There is now a provision for life
imprisonment. That is a sufficient deterrent. These powers
need to be used in a fair and fearless manner; and any rent
collection by drug authorities or quid pro quo with
manufacturers should invite summary administrative
action from suspension to dismissal. Action on the bribe
giver and taker is necessary, as also rewards for whistle-
blowers from within the CDSCO and not only for the
general public. Also consumers and prescribers need to be
educated on what constitutes quality in a medicine. Special
medicine quality testing kits need to be made widely
available.
We may also observe in passing that quality
standards have gone up especially of those manufacturers
exporting to countries with well-functioning regulatory
agencies. It is in the manufacturers self-interest. Hence
wide publicity to substandard medicines (apart from the
odd batch failing in spite of best efforts) should discourage
wilful mischief makers.
Rationalising the Workload: The CDSCO is
groaning with excess workload. Many of the problems of
work overload of the CDSCO and the State Drug
Commissionerates are self-inflicted. We have too many
medicines and far too many of them do not find mention
in standard textbooks of pharmacology. The first act of
cleaning the stables would be to remove all those
medicines that are unnecessary, irrational and of doubtful
value. These would include swift weeding out of harmful
medicines like analgin. Allow only standard dosages and
formulations of the remaining which would be about 800-
1,000 molecules. Weed out unauthorised FDCs using
powers given to the CDSCO under Section 33P and
Section 26A. There still would be authorised FDCs but
these would include irrational medicines. A committee
may be appointed to weed out these on broad principles
of when FDCs can be deemed rational and what kind of
FDCs would be irrational and must therefore be weeded
out. These measures would apply to vaccines also. In
addition, the principle enunciated in Para 9.8 of the report
must be used: In general, if an FDC is not approved
anywhere in the world, it may not be cleared for use in
India unless there is a specific disease or disorder
prevalent in India, or a very specific reason backed by
scientific evidence and irrefutable data applicable
specifically to India that justifies the approval of a
particular FDC. This must be applied to any medicine.
Also strict use of Rule 30B of the Drugs and
Cosmetics Act prohibiting import of drugs banned in the
country of its origin would minimise entry of unwanted
and useless medicines in the country. We feel
implementation of these measures would considerably
increase efficiency in decision-making in the CDSCO. At
the risk of an inappropriate analogy, it is like increasing
the power avail ability in the country by cutting down
transmission losses.
Debranding: We agree with the recommendation on
near sounding brand names. But why not remove brand
names completely, debrand as the Pronab Sen Task
Force (2005) has recommended? India is the only country
with significant manufacturing ability where medicines
out of patent are sold under brand names.
Drug Approvals and Ethnic Diversity: Some of the
measures recommended in the report would lead to an
increase in the clinical trial load in the country. We would
however urge that before these are implemented in toto,
we need to have laws in place to regulate clinical trial
misdemeanours, laws to regulate Contract Research
Organisations, and laws for compensation on clinical trial
injury. Whether increased requirements of clinical trials will
end up increasing the tribulations of an already vulnerable
population the poor, tribals, etc need to be given
thought. The report has recommended taking into
account ethnic diversity of the Indian population in Phase
3 clinical trial participants. Whether ethnic diversity within
India is a significant factor in the pharmacodynamics and
pharmacokinetics of every drug, the jury is still out.
There is no CDSCO guideline on the topic and it is not
clear if any thinking has been done by Indias research
community on this issue. But this certainly is an area that
needs thought. But an equally important consideration is
to focus on pharmacology and drug effectiveness of
undernourished populations.

What is the use if much of
the medicine is excreted by undernourished populations?
We certainly know that dosages are decided on the b asis
of western body weights.
Transparency, Conflict of Interests: Drug regulation
in India is notoriously non-transparent: Non-transparency
in the process of approval of new medicine formulations
for manufacture and marketing, lack of easy public access
to research data used in approval of new medicines, and
data related to all clinical trials. We also need a clear
declaration of conflict of interest at all decision-making
levels followed by recusal of those having conflict of
interests. Both situations urgently need to be remedied.
A Law to Check Unethical Medicine Promotion and
Updating of Existing Laws: Unethical medicine
promotion is another way in which irrational use increases
and impoverishes patients. The CDSCO has never taken
curbing unethical medicine promotion as part of its
mandate partly because there is no clear law on the
matter. This hiatus needs to be remedied quickly. Some
civil society groups have already worked on such a draft
law.
There is a need for harmonisation of the provisions
in sections of the Drugs and Magic Remedies
(Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954, and Rules
(1955), provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act
(Sections 17 and 18 on misbranded, adulterated and
spurious drugs), Schedule J of the Rules to the Drugs and
Cosmetics Act (Diseases and ailments by whatever name
described which a drug may not purport to prevent or
cure or make claims to prevent or cure). These all need
to be harmonised and taken into account recent medical
developments such that it will deter misleading
advertisements as well as drugs and devices making fancy
116
claims across the spectrum of systems of medicines. The
laws are toothless in preventing fairness creams,
presumably because this is not a specified condition in the
Schedule to the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objection
able Advertisements) Act and are neither in the list of
items in Schedule J of the Rules to the Drugs and
Cosmetics Act nor are claimed in the labels or cartons for
action under the provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics
Act (Sections 17 and 18 on misbranded, adulterated and
spurious drugs). Nevertheless, the drug commissioners
have not made sufficient use of such powers that do exist
(for instance, medicines for baldness, a specified proscribed
condition in the said provisions, are routinely advertised
with impunity). Or even in as simple a matter as
advertisements in the lay press of Schedule H prescription
drugs.
Consulting the DTAB for Banning Medicines: A
matter requiring formal clarity is whether the Drug
Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) needs to be consulted in
the banning of drugs. The Report, Para 8.9, asks
at the time of approval of drugs, the matter is not
referred to DTAB, then why should DTAB be involved
when drugs are to be banned? Secondly, many drugs have
been approved by DCGI without consultations with
experts; why involve them when banning?
However it goes on to say that consultation as such
is welcome. A recent judgment of the Madras High Court,
even as we write this, has opined that the central
government need not consult the DTAB in the banning of
drugs.

The governments response to the Parliamentary
Committee Report has been to set up another committee.
Hopefully this committee will not be an instrument to
sweep matters under the carpet. If anything the 59th
Parliamentary Committee Report is an opportunity to
radically clean the anarchy in drug regulation in India in
the interests of public health. Surely, The Pharmacy of
the World deserves a better regulatory body.
Courtesy-Economic & Political Weekly
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