14.01.2007

• Indo-ASEAN FTA talks
• Our PM is attending the 5^th India-ASEAN summit at Cebu, Philippines.
• ASEAN has been showing some discrimination between India and China. While for India, it has kept a negative list of 1000 items, for China the list is only about 300. India is sure to take up this issue in the current summit.
• Currently India’s total trade with ASEAN is about $22 bn (2005-06).
• 2^nd East Asian Summit
• This is envisaging a very ambitious project involving gradual movement towards an Asian Economic Community on the lines of the EU.
• The first summit was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• Behind the scenes, China had been lobbying with some of the ASEAN nations that the key nations driving the larger economic community must remain the ASEAN 10 plus 3 i.e., China, South Korea and Japan. But Japan has rooted for a much wider Asia-Pacific network, which includes India in its ambit.
• What makes Indians more entrepreneurial in US than in India?
• US provides the right environment for risk-taking. It creates an appropriate risk-reward trade-off encouraging people to strike out on their own. In contrast, in India the environment discourages risk-taking. It is hard to take risk when there is no safety net, when the difference between failure and success could be as stark as that between being on the streets and getting home, safe and dry.
• In US, failures are not so much attached with any stigma. In fact, there failure is appreciated as dare devilry. That is not the case in India.
• People say it is these differences that make Indians going abroad turning successful entrepreneurs.
• The largest and most complex Jain temple in India
• The Chaturmukh Jain temple of Rishabhadev at Ranakpur.
• Designed by Dipa Shilpi, it took 65 years to build it. It was built during the period 1367 to 1432 AD.
• RBI concerned over FDI deluge in real estate sector
• The FDI inflow into the sector went up to $703.3 mn in January to October 2006 from $135.5 mn during the same period of previous year.
• Forecasts say that real estate sector will grow to $90 bn by 2015 from about $12 bn in 2005.
• India’s largest consumer durables company
• It is LG with about Rs. 8,250 crore turnover during the calendar year 2006.
• Unbeatable Gujarat
• In just two days, the state has attracted investment commitments totaling a whopping Rs. 4.50 lakh crores from 330 MoUs (Memorandum of Understanding)
• This sort of investment has the potential to generate about 12 lakh jobs in that state alone.
• Railway’s brilliant performance
• Indian Railways carries about 16 mn passengers in a typical year.
• Two reasons attributed for its brilliant financial performance:
• Fall in average turnaround time (the round trip time for the wagon between two loadings) of trains from 7 days to 5 days.
• Increasing the load that wagons carry by 4 to 8 tonnes.
• This has resulted in Railways carrying an extra 668 mn tonnes of freight in 2005-06 bringing in an additional revenue of Rs. 36,490 crores.
• Defining PPP model
• PPP (Public Private Partnership) is about sharing of risk and reward over the asset’s lifecycle.
• Mere private provision of services is not PPP.
• PPPs happen when services hitherto provided by the State are provided by entities outside the government control.
• Aerobatic teams of various countries:
• Britain’s team is called The Red Arrows
• Americans call their team Thunderbirds
• India’s team is called Suryakirans
• Till the formation of “The Thunderbolts” in 1982 India never had any aerobatic team. This gave its last public display in 1989.
• Being the 4^th largest air force in the world, it felt compelled to form its own team again for the Aero India show in 1996.
• Kalaripayattu
• This martial art form originating in Kerala is considered the mother of all martial art forms.
• Kung Fu, popularized by the monks of the Shaolin Temple traces its ancestry to one Bodhi Dharma, an Indian Buddhist monk and Kalaripayattu master.
• ‘Kalari’ means “place, threshing floor, or battlefield”. ‘Payattu’ means “to exercise in arms or practice”.
• This art form reached its pinnacle of glory during 100 years war between the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas in the eary part of the first millennium.
• Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)
• This is an interesting evolution that is happening to the digital gaming scene and can be best explained by a scenario:
• Imagine you are playing an online game on your laptop when your mobile buzzes. The call is not from humans. It is from the character that you just killed in the game that you are playing!!!
• ARGs are not passive experiences. It involves the world around us – advertising, telephone lines, websites, fake companies and even actors and actresses we can meet in real life.
• Though we, in India, may be still a little while away from playing such games, there are any number of people who are betting big on this type of gaming experience.
• What is doomsday clock?
• It is a symbolic clockface maintained since 1947 by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. It uses the analogy of the human race being at a time that is a 'few minutes to midnight' where midnight represents destruction by nuclear war.
• It is the news because it keepers decided to move its hands forward next Wednesday to reflect worsening nuclear and climate threats to the world.