07.04.2007

• As expected there is lot of heat being generated on quota politics
• A division bench of the UP High Court has set aside the order of the single judge which held that Muslims in UP are not a minority.
• And our favourite paper also hailed the decision of the division bench and went on to say that the term ‘minority’ is not a semantic marker of superficial cultural difference. In a democracy it is meant to underscore the real difference between various social identities, vis-à-vis their access to social development and cultural freedoms.
• I may not entirely agree with this line of argument. I am sure of one thing – this is going to keep generating lot of heat in the days to come, perhaps months. Let’s keep watching.
• In today’s centre page article, we have a very good piece written by V Krishna Ananth. Don’t miss to read it here.
• While I don’t agree with the ultimate findings given by the author, a couple of observations made by the author which are worth noting from the point of view of factual position are:
• The two judge bench of the Supreme Court has struck down the OBC reservation on two grounds:
• The quantum of reservation (27%) is based on some arbitrary consideration; the premise that OBCs constitute 54% of the population is based on projections made from the census of 1931, could be faulty.
• Non-exclusion of the ‘creamy layer’ from the reservation bracket is against the Constitution. The Act thus seeks to determine social and educational backwardness only on the basis of caste; and hence violates the law as upheld in the Indira Sawhney vs Union of India and Others case in 1992.
• Constitution of India, it is stated provides for positive discrimination in favour of backward classes and not castes.
• Know something about VAS (Value Added Service) providers
• Whenever you download a game or a ring tone to your mobile phone, do you know that a content provider (the VAS provider) gets a portion of the money you pay for it?
• Normally it is the creator of the good or service that is expected to get a major share of the pie being paid by the ultimate customer. But as in many other businesses, it is the middleman who makes most of the money here too. The creator of the content – the game or the ring tone – has to be content with about 30% of the money being paid by the end user. The remaining goes to the telecom company and the distributor.
• In India, the VAS market has grown to a Rs. 2,800 crore business today and is expected to touch about Rs. 4,500 crores by the end of 2007.
• Today is World Health Day
• In the year 1948, the World Health Organization held the First World Health Assembly. The Assembly decided to celebrate 7^th April of each year, with effect from 1950, as the World Health Day. The World Health Day is celebrated to create “awareness of a specific health theme to highlight a priority area of concern for the World Health Organization (WHO)”. Activities - related to that particular theme and the resources provided - continue beyond 7^th April, that is, the designated day for celebrating the World Health Day.
• The theme of the World Health day for 2007: Invest in health, build a safer future.
• Want to know more? Follow this link.
• Inflation and various indices
• You know there are basically two indices which measure inflation in the country. The WPI (Wholesale Price Index) and the CPI (Consumer Price Index). There is also another called the GDP deflator; but its usage is very limited because it is not available on a frequent basis.
• The GDP deflator (implicit price deflator for GDP) is a measure of the change in prices of all new, domestically produced, final goods and services in an economy. Read more about it here.
• In the constitution of the WPI, there is heavy weightage for manufactured goods. In the CPI there is heavy weightage for food products.
• CPI is of three types: CPI-IW (for industrial workers), CPI-AL (for agricultural labour) and CPI-UNME (for urban non manual employees). Of these it is the first variety which is used very widely.
• The government usually looks at the WPI figures for its policy responses on inflation.
• Trading stocks on Internet
• India seems to be taking to internet trading in a big way, with growths in the retail investor numbers on the internet growing by leaps and bounds. Last noticed, it was above 100%.
• The Indian brokerages charge about 0.4% as brokerage. In contrast these charges are about 0.014% in Japan and US.
• Sport
• Apart from the usual grabbing of headline space by the BCCI, we have an obituary to note from the exam point of view.
• Lakshman Prabhakaran: the hockey gold medalist in the 1998 Asian Games died of cardiac arrest. He was 33.