Indian Current Affairs: 13.06.2007

The Health Care Joint Working Group of the UK-India Joint Economic Trade Committee – Jetco, has reached a consensus that medical degrees from reputed medical institutions must be recognized by each other on a case-by-case basis. Jetco is co-chaired by the trade ministers of the UK (Alistair Darling) and India (Kamal Nath).
At present immigrant doctors are required to take PLAB – Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board test. Nurses are required to clear qualifying exams to register with the Nurses and Midwife Council in the UK.
The British General Medical Council and Medical Council of India stopped recognizing each other’s medical degrees in 1975.

The high growth in manufacturing was attributed to increase in investments, which touched a record level of 34% of GDP in the last fiscal.
Output of capital goods and consumer goods is up 17.7% in April compared to last year. This shows that the growth is investment led rather than consumption-led.

HLL has a ad budget of about Rs.1200 crore per annum. It has decided to go in reverse auction for getting more bang for its media bucks.
What is a reverse auction?

In this while HLL announces how much spend it will be making on ad spends for a particular period (usually monthly), the media outlets will submit their bids with discounts or value-additions. HLL will choose the best offer that suits it.

Reverse English Auctions: Sellers bid the lowest price and bidding stops when the auction time is up. English auctions also allow the buyer to specify a reserve price above which the item will not be bought.
Reverse Vickrey Auctions: The Vickrey auction allows for selling single items, as does the English Auction. The difference is that the lowest bidder sells the item at the price offered by the second lowest bidder.
Reverse Dutch Auctions: Dutch auctions are designed to handle the case where a buyer wishes to buy a number of identical items. The buyer must specify the maximum price (starting bid) and the exact number of items he wants at that price.
Reverse Yankee Auctions: Bidders sell what they bid as opposed to selling at the price determined by the lowest bidder (as in Dutch Auction).

We have been reading about the deepening of the corporate bond market of late. Why is the news item saying that the corporate bond placement is up? Does it mean that it has already deepened?
No. Take a look at the figures:

The balance is comprised of PSUs, State FIs and State PSUs.
These are anyway private placements. They are not traded in open market like stocks. That is the difference between a deepened corporate bond market and one which is obtaining now.

It is a tax which is levied on speculative currency trades across the borders to discourage the flow of short term hot money.

As opposed to normal forming which tills the land – with ploughs and tractors, in this the land is not tilled. Instead the farmers use a drill tool which helps to directly place the seed in the soil.
This is gaining ground all across the world due to:

Shortage of farm labour. Eg. US, EU, Indonesia & Malaysia
Benefit of non-draining of the top soil in the event of flooding.
Popularity of GM crops. As these are herbicide resistant, farmers are spared the effort of having to till their lands. Tilling removes the weeds.
Yield jump of 10 to 15% in this method of farming.
Possibility of earning carbon credits, as reduced emissions results from non-use of tractors and tillers.

Acreage under the GM crops has seen exponential jump. From 2 mn hectares in 1996, it has touched 102 mn hectares in 2006.

Japanese scientists have come up with this. They have created the vaccine by inserting part of the cholera bacterium Vibro cholerae into the Kitaake rice plant.
Vaccine so developed need not have to be refrigerated right up to the point of delivery. It has a shelf life of several years at regular room temperature.

Titled the State Prize, in its earlier avatar it was called the Stalin Prize and later on the Lenin Prize.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn is the second person to receive this for ‘humanitarian activities’. The first one was the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexy II who won it last year.
Solzhenitsyn is Russian dissidence personified. He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970. He was expelled from USSR in 1974. He returned to Russia in 1994.

Indian Current Affairs