Indian Current Affairs: 03.12.2006

The knitwear capital of the country is carving a niche for itself in something else also. That is export of stone idols of gods and goddesses from the Hindu Pantheon to temples abroad.

Is the 46 year old businessman from Dubai; Chairman of Emaar Properties, the world’s largest real estate company.
His company is working on prestigious projects like the world’s tallest building – Burj Dubai and the world’s largest shopping mall.

Located about 50 kms from Bhopal, these caves are home to pre-historic art. The paintings found there in the caves are stated to be about 30,000 years old!!!
They were discovered in 1958 by V.S. Wakankar, an archaeologist.

I covered about higher education on two occasions earlier. Once on 30.10.2006 in Indian Current Affairs and twice (15.11.2006 & 30.11.2006) on Discover It blog. Now we have some more info coming our way:
No more than 17 million students have received tertiary education in India, which has a population of about 1.21 bn.
The US with about 30% of India’s population, has three times as many people, with tertiary education.
The enrolment ratio in tertiary education in India is around 9% compared to over 60% ratio in many developed countries.

We noted on 25.11.2006 about our efforts at playing the star wars in defence.
Buoyed with the success of the tests that we discussed earlier, the defence establishment is planning to come with a new missile called PAD which can shoot down incoming warheads, much closer to the ground.
Mr. Vijay Kumar Saraswat is the country’s top missile scientist. He is the chief controller of the country’s missile program.

Zune is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iPod. This is expected to sell about 3 mln units in its first year.
Vista, the newest operating system from M$’s (M$ = Microsoft for the uninitiated) stable is expected to run on about 76 mln desktops by the end of 2007.
Vista sales should bring in about $11.5 bn in profits to M$ in the current fiscal.

FDI in retail (single branded products): Upto 51% is allowed with prior government approval as per the policy stated in Press Note 3 of 2006.
Share of organized retail in India is about 3% of the close to $300 bn market. This is expected to grow to 10% by 2010.
Reliance Retail’s size of envisaged operations:

He is the renowned British cosmologist and the author of the best selling book “A Brief History of Time”.
He says that man must colonize other planets. And that this would be possible by using ‘matter/antimatter annihilation’, which would help reaching velocities just below the speed of light for inter-stellar travel.
He was conferred the world’s oldest award for scientific achievement – the Copley medal recently by the British Royal Society. Previous winners of this medal included Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein.

icamaven said...: Allocation in central budget for school education has increased from Rs. 6,546 cr in 2003-04 to Rs. 18,839 cr for 2006-07.

India is the only large country where the size of the working-age population is expected to grow until the year 2040 before it begins to decline. This is called the ‘demographic dividend’.

In 1950-51 there were about 750 colleges; today there are 17,000.

Similarly there were a mere 30 universities at the dawn of independence; and today there are 300 of them.

International experience shows that a Gross Enrollment Ratio of 20% is the minimum threshold that will contribute to rapid and sustainable growth.

Measures taken by government for helping the education scene:
1. Decided that all central and aided educational institutions will be required to increase the capacity by 54% over a three year period.
2. Intends to allow foreign educational institutions to offer courses in India independently or in collaboration with Indian institutions.
3. The Knowledge Commission has been set up to look into the issue of building quality human capital.; Wednesday, December 06, 2006 7:48:00 PM

Indian Current Affairs