Indian Current Affairs: 21.11.2006

FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) is expected to touch about $12 bn this fiscal as against $7.7 bn last year.

In a curious twist to the PPP (Private Public Partnership) model the Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers is asking the pharmaceutical companies to contribute a share of their turnover to provide free medicines to the people through drug banks and medical camps for the poor.
If the companies fail to meet their commitment, they would not be allowed an annual upward revision of prices.

It is a vision of our President Abdul Kalam to create PURAs in the country. About 7000 such PURAs can ensure faster development of our society. Each PURA calls for providing connectivity fo 15 to 20 villages with 50,000 population.
The GoI is planning to launch two PURA clusters in each of the districts during the 11^th plan period.
700 mln people are living in 6 lk villages equivalent to 2 lk panchayats.

90% of our country’s medical equipment requirement is met through imports.
Hence the Union Minister of Health Mr. Anbumani Ramdoss is proposing to estabilsh Medical Parks to reverse the trend of high imports of health-related equipment.

At present there is a sectoral limit on exposure by banks to infrastructure. No bank can lend more than 25% of its total net lendable resources to a particular sector like Power, Telecom or Roads. Within this sectoral limit, no project can be lent more than 10% of the available funds. In addition banks also cannot lend more than Rs. 1000 cr for a single project.
The government is thinking of relaxing these limits in view of the increased infrastructure funding requirements.
We have noted earlier that the country is targeting about $320 bn investment in infrastructure during the next 5 year plan.
As of March, 2006 out of the total bank credit of Rs. 5,49,057 cr the infrastructure sector could be lent only 19.8% by the banking system.

It is likely to be scaled down from 2.5% proposed initially to about 2.1% of the GDP due to apprehensions about resource constraints expressed by the Finance Ministry.

Reasons in favour of open skies policy with ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations)

The benefits of open skies policy with ASEAN are likely to far outweigh the costs of repercussions for the airline industry.
Competition induced drop in cost of air travel following liberalization of air services usually results in a spurt in trade and tourism-related traffic, which in turn has significant externalities.

Passenger trains run an average of 55 kmph and goods trains run 24 kmph (kilometers per hour).
The plan is to increase the former to 100 kmph and the goods trains to 60 kmph.

We have only heard of credit cards, debit cards, smart cards etc. Contact less cards are meant for paying small change; say for purchasing newspapers, bus tickets, cigarrettes etc. Master Card and VISA have introduced these cards for payments of less than $25. There are estimated to be about 21 mln such cards issued in US.
There is no need to put the cards into a terminal to make payments. Just wave them in air and the money gets transferred from the card to the terminal.

We seem to be not in a position to count the number of Tigers in our country. Hence CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology) a Hyderabad based scientific research organization has come out with a plan to undertake the Tiger census with the help of DNA fingerprinting.
What exactly is DNA fingerprinting? And who invented it?

Its various names include: genetic fingerprinting, DNA testing and DNA profiling. It distinguishes between individuals of the same species using only samples of their DNA. Its invention by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester was announced in 1985.

Indian Current Affairs