Indian Current Affairs: 03.10.2007

Remember the moppet (Amul girl) of “Utterly butterly delicious” fame? It was way back in 1967 that she appeared on the advertisements for the first time.
She is a very precocious character and has managed to remain fondly remembered in the country. Take a look at some of her memorable quotes:

Taste Tube baby – referring to some medical advancements in late 1960’s.
Automatically Amul – referring to the first escalator in Mumbai in 1979.
Ta ta power?, Amul, Unlimited Supply – referring to power shortage in Mumbai.
Haseena Maan Jahegi? – referring to the police dealing with underworld don Dawood Ibrahim’s sister Haseena Parkar in cases ranging from extortion to cheating and forgery in May 2007.
Eat the Real Thing – referring to the colas popularity in early 90’s
Yes to Khana – referring to the dreaded Y2K problem.

DoT is handing over this function to the about to be setup CERSEM (Centre for Excellence for Radio Spectrum Engineering and Management). At present it is the WPC that is looking into this subject.

Apophis an asteroid, which is due to cross earth’s orbit in 2029 could probably hit the earth under certain conditions, says a Russian scientist.

In the context of the country moving toward a single GST – Goods and Services Tax in 2010 and the CST being phased out, let us take a look at this tax briefly.
It is levied by the Centre but collected and appropriated by the states.
In 2005-06 CST collections stood at Rs. 16,000 crores. In 2007-08 they are estimated to be about Rs. 25,000 crores.
States will face a revenue loss of about Rs. 6,000 on account of reduction in CST. The CST rate is being gradually reduced from 4% to 0%. It was reduced to 3% already. The plan is to reduce it annually by 1% to bring it down to zero by 2010.

I remember our having some debate on this some time back in our blogs. See this snippet from today’s ET:
RBI issues coins on behalf of the central government which has the sole right to mint coins as per the Coinage Act, 1906. The designing and minting of coins in various denominations is also the responsibility of the government. Coins are minted at the government mints in Mumbai, Alipore (Kolkata), Hyderabad (Saifabad and Cherlapally), and Noida.

India’s exports are growing in dollar terms (19%) while showing a marginal 4.3% in rupee terms. This implies that they are trying to maintain volume growth at the expense of profit margins, which have been hit due to strengthening rupee.
The solution suggested by ET today in its editorial, to improve the competitiveness of Indian exports is – allow large foreign retailers to set up operations in the country. The logic is that the huge outsourcing taken up by them from the local market for their global operations is well documented in many countries – notably China. This will bring in know-how and investments to modernize the logistic chain.
But will the government bite? I doubt it. The picture of Reliance rolling back some of its retail operations in some parts of the country and totally in UP is too recent for comfort for any government. If India becomes a global outsourcing hub for vegetables and other sundry daily needs, imagine the consequences on prices? Can any political party accept such a scenario? I think foreign retail will take far longer to enter the country through FDI.

It is well known that lot of illegal migration takes place from Bangladesh to India in the north-east. This is also the main cause of the Assam agitation between 1979 and 1985. Let’s take a look at some of the figures given by PR Ramesh in today’s ET:
In the past 22 years, the government has spent about Rs. 4.05 bn on detecting foreigners; but has managed to expel only 1864 illegal migrants from Assam.
A report prepared by Lt. General SK Sinha noted that Muslim population in Assam rose by 77.42% between 1971 and 1991, compared to 41.89% for the Hindus. The all-India increase in Muslim population during the period was only 55.04%. This proves that infiltration is continuing.

Because the Supreme Court has said so. In a 1998 case – CPI(M) vs. Bharat Kumar & Ors – the Supreme Court while upholding the Kerala High Court ruling of 1997, has said bandhs – as distinct from ‘general strikes’ and ‘hartals’ are unconstitutional, because they trample the rights of the common man.
In spite of this, we are not seeing political parties shying away from them!!!

The Right Livelihood Award, established in 1980 by Jakob von Uexkull, is presented annually in the Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm, usually on December 9, to honour those "working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today". An international jury decides the awards in such fields as environmental protection, human rights, sustainable development, health, education, peace, etc. The prize money is shared among the winners, usually four, and is SEK (Swedish Kronor) 2 million.
2007 awardees:

Indian Current Affairs