Indian Current Affairs: 25.05.2007

Sridhar was asking me as to why loans advanced by IMF to a country are not called loans. I gave my response in the Discover It blog today. Take a look at it here.
European Parliament

We all know that EU’s Parliament is located in Strasbourg. But do you know the country where Strasbourg is? It is in France on the border with Germany.

The EU passed this report with an overwhelming majority. IT criticized Pakistan for its lack of progress on democracy and human rights and commended India as the largest secular democracy.

There are 18 peace keeping missions in the world today in which almost 90,000 soldiers, military observers, civilian police, and international civilian staff serve.
These missions are in adverse light lately for their misconduct. They are accused of human rights violations – especially of sexually abusing the people they are supposed to protect.
In Liberia, earlier this year, the UN deployed its first ever all-woman peace-keeping unit – a contingent of 103 Indian police officers.
Some beneficial unintended consequences of international peace-keeping forces include:

Indian Ocean tsunami brought peace in Aceh, Indonesia.
Soldiers from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan working together in UN peace keeping missions all over the world.
Soldiers from South American countries with a history of military rule are socialized into the precept and practice of civilian supremacy.

It has about 18 different Muslim and Christian religious sects, labyrinthine politics and powerful and ruthless neighbours. It is now 60% Muslim and 40% Christian. Lebanon was carved out of Ottoman empire after the first world war. It has always been other people’s wars. Syria and Israel both played roles in the 1975-90 civil war in which 150,000 died. Israel occupied south in 1978 and launched a full fledged war aimed at the PLO’s biggest stronghold in 1982. But its withdrawal in 2000 did not stop last summer’s war, triggered by Hizbollah but backed by Syria and Iran in their own proxy conflict with US.

Under Article 317 of the Constitution, the President makes a reference to the Supreme Court.
Sayalee Sanjeev Joshi, member of the Maharashtra PSC was removed from service for misconduct and misbehaviour. She was arrested on a complaint of exam malpractices. She did not inform the PSC of her daughter applying for 2002 exam.

Germany has built a fortress for the G8 summit.
It is using scent-tracking methods to keep a check on selected protesters planning to demonstrate at next month’s G8 summit.
Sniffer dogs can track possible violent protesters via police database of human scents collected in advance from selected targets.
While there are people expressing shock at using the erstwhile East German secret police’s (Stasi) methods, some are dismissing it as nothing more than collecting finger prints.

AC Milan beat Liverpool 2-1 to win the European championship for a record 7^th time.

Two pilots became the first to fly around the Earth by way of the north and south poles in one helicopter in a single trip.
Jennifer Murray (US) and Colin Bodill (UK) did this in a Red Bell 407 helicopter.

It is a huge (15 meter diameter) circular fishing net made of HDPE pipes and two nets – an outer one and an inner one. The cage is anchored well and can withstand rough sea conditions. Inside it fish are cultured.
The first such cage culture is launched in Visakhapatnam. It is going to be introduced in 3 more centers at Ratnagiri, Diu and Mandapam.
CMFRI – Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute is overseeing this project.

It says that three animal or plant species are getting wiped out every hour and that the world must do more to slow the worst spate of extinctions.

An expert committee headed by T.L. Shankar in its second report has suggested urgent need to restructure the management structure of CIL. Its proposal gave the Chairman of CIL overall power of management over the Coal PSUs. The post of CMD in all its eight subsidiaries will be abolished and the functional directors in the units will be liable for transfer among the subsidiaries, if needed.

India has regained the top position in rubber productivity. We now grow 1879 kg per hectare per year.

The government has tightened external fund flows into the sector with a view to curb the real estate bubble.
But these measures are short term and will hit sectors other than real estate in the process. The only long-term solution is to increase supply. This includes making it easier to change land use from agriculture to industry, increasing the floor-area ratio and releasing land which is under-utilised by the government.

Remember we noted something about this recently in Discover It blog?
The RBI has imposed a limit of Rs. 20,000 crores for the first half and Rs. 6,000 crore for the second half. The government cannot exceed these limits to meet its temporary revenue mismatches. Interest on WMA will be the prevailing repo rate. If the government borrows anything above this limit, the interest rate will be 2% above the repo rate.

Indian Current Affairs