Indian Current Affairs: 04.02.2007

The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, reckons that there is a case for controlling excessive growth in money supply. Money supply is currently running at close to 21% as against 16% last year and the RBI’s projection of 15% in its April 2006 monetary policy statement.
Both household and corporate savings are up, with corporate savings now accounting for 8% of GDP and household savings in financial assets recording an increase.
Overheating of an economy is normally reflected in two ways – either in the balance of payments (BoP) or in the price level (inflation). As far as the BoP is concerned, the EAC estimates that the current account deficit at 1.5% of GDP is quite comfortable. For the first time foreign direct investment is more than portfolio investment.
The EAC estimates that the per capita income growth would be more than 7% in 2006 and 2007, for the first time in 15 years.
RBI’s main worry is rising consumer loans which has shown an unprecented growth of 34.3% to Rs. 1,01,631 crores, while credit flow grew by only 24.8% to Rs. 1,18,481 crores.

IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the world’s premier scientific organization whose findings are a key reference for climate change scientists, policy makers as well as critics.
It notes that the average temperature of the Earth is set to rise by a whopping 3 degree Celsius this century if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed significantly.
The review also states that we are just 5 degree Celsius warmer than the last ice age.
Based on simple extrapolations, costs of extreme weather alone could reach 05. to 1% of world GDP per annum by the middle of the century.
Australia says there is ‘nothing new’ in the report. It is the only developed country apart from the US, which has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions. The purported reason given by them was that the treaty is unfair as it only caps emissions from industrialized nations and not developing countries.

“Madam I’m Adam” – this phrase is probably considered so.
“Able was I ere I saw Elba”, another palindrome is attributed to Napoleon.
A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or any other sequence of units (like a strand of DNA) which has the property of reading the same in either direction (the adjustment of spaces between letters is generally permitted). The word "palindrome" comes from the Greek words palin ("back") and dromos ("racecourse").

A voucher is a demand side financing mechanism in which they will be distributed to the beneficiaries who, in turn, can redeem them to their choicest accredited hospitals or nursing homes after availing of the services.
The central health ministry, the UP government and the USAID have rolled out a health voucher scheme to help people from BPL (below poverty line) families get easy access to free, quality reproductive health services.

The new policy that is expected to come into force from January 2009, lays down that at the six major airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, there will be only three ground handlers – the airport operator or its subsidiary, a subsidiary of Air India and Indian and a ground handler selected through competitive bidding process.
While Jet Airways and Sahara would like to handle their own ground handling facilities, the low cost carriers favour outsourcing.

It is estimated that India Inc has placed orders for anywhere between 110 to 150 private corporate jets in 2006, both for personal and official use.

Indian Railways has identified about 20 stations across the country which could be converted into heritage sites.
Indian heritage rail system is far behind its global counterparts. The total route mileage of the British heritage railways is 384 miles with 279 stations.
India has only 5 rail museums, including the national museum in Delhi.
Only three rail properties – Mumbai CST building, Darjeeling Himalayan Railway and Nilgiri Mountain Railway – got the recognition as the world heritage sites.

Less than a sixth of those about to retire in the next 10 years are covered by some form of pension, and only 2% of those not working in government being able to fund their retired lives even if they cut expenses by half.
There are 70 mn elderly in India, and the number is expected to increase to 113 mn by 2016 and 179 mn by 2026.
Currently 4 mn people retire every year.

It is an oriental game of strategy. Go was invented more than 2500 years ago by Chinese. This is one game in which computers have not yet been able to defeat humans.
Chess has long been conquered by computers and computers have proved better than humans in playing chess. It has been possible by the use of ‘brute force’ method. In this method, rather searching for the best move in a given position, as humans do, the computers considers all white’s moves – even bad ones – and all black’s possible replies, and all white’s replies to those replies, and son for say, a dozen turns. The resulting map of possible moves has millions of branches. The computer combs through the possible outcomes and plays the one move that would give its opponent the fewest chances of winning.
Programmers are making impressive gains with an technique known as Monte Carlo method, which was originally developed in the Manhattan project to build the first nuclear bombs in the 1940’s. Monte Carlo methods are algorithms for solving various kinds of computational problems by using random numbers (or more often pseudo-random numbers), as opposed to deterministic algorithms. Monte Carlo methods are extremely important in computational physics and related applied fields, and have diverse applications from esoteric quantum chromodynamics calculations to designing heat shields and aerodynamic forms.

It is calculated by dividing the mass of the body in kgs by the square of the height in metres. The WHO regards a BMI under 18.5 as indicating underweight.

Indian Current Affairs