23.02.2007

• India’s place in global electronics market
• India is expected to account for 11% of the global electronics market by 2015. It was about 1.8% in 2005.
• Sell-off norm in insurance likely to go
• At present, Indian promoters of a private insurance company have to bring down their equity stake to 26% within 10 years of starting business. If the Finance Ministry’s proposal goes through, it will benefit players like HDFC, ICICI, Birlas, Reliance ADAG and Tata AIG to retain their stake.
• Mashelkar Panel on intellectual property rights
• When the Patents (Amendment) Bill was being passed in 2005, the Left has agreed to support the legislation after the government gave an assurance that the concerns raised by the Left are included in an amendment to the Act.
• Then the Mashelkar Panel was appointed and it submitted its report recently. It held that limiting the granting of patents for pharmaceutical entities would not be TRIPS compliant and that excluding micro-organisms per se from patent protection would be violative of the TRIPS agreement.
• Mr. Mashelkar himself has admitted that some portions of the report were plagiarized. The Left has seized upon this admission and said it is rejecting the report. Government is yet to make its mind clear on this report.
• ITC’s e-choupal
• This project brings down the transportation cost and commission agent fee as farmers bring directly produce from farm to warehouse without any intermediaries.
• Farmers benefit through enhanced farm productivity and higher farm-gate prices, and ITC benefits from lower net cost of procurement having eliminated costs in the supply chain that do not add value.
• This project has covered 31,000 villages so far, and has reached out to 30 lakh (3 mln) farmers through 5,200 kiosks across 6 states.
• About nano-technology
• It is the creation of functional materials, devices and systems through control of matter on the nanometer length scale ( 1 – 100 nanometers). For comparison, 10 nanometers is 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.
• Benefits: Molecular manufacturing technology can be self-contained and clean; a single packing crate or suitcase could contain all equipment required for a village-scale industrial revolution. It will provide cheap and advanced equipment for medical research and health care, making improved medicine widely available.
• Disadvantages:
• Economic disruption from an abundance of cheap products
• Economic oppression from artificially inflated prices
• Personal risk from criminal or terrorist use
• Social disruption from new products or lifestyles
• Unstable arms race
• Environmental damage from unregulated products
• India’s intended aeroplane purchases
• It is expected to buy about 480 planes at a cost of Rs. 1,35,000 crores in the next five years
• Government kicks of CST phase out with 1% cut
• The Cabinet cleared the proposal to cut CST by 1% to 3% effective April 1, this year.
• The states earn about Rs. 25,000 crores from CST. As this reduction would make a dent of about Rs. 6,250 crores in states’ revenues, a compensation package is worked out.
• This package includes transfer of revenues from 44 old and 33 new services, the right to impose VAT on imports and certain tobacco and tobacco products and budgetary support.
• Declining share of agriculture in our GDP
• It has declined from 34% in 1991-92 to just less than 23% in 2004-05.