Indian Current Affairs: 17.10.2007

I am really surprised that there is not much noise being made about the crude price touching the $90 mark.
One idea that is put across is that when you look at the 1980 price for crude, the current price is still below what it could have been, if it had accounted for inflation during this period. In 1980 it was $38 a barrel. Adjusting for inflation it should have been trading around $96 to $101 per barrel. But it is still at $90, which is very comfortable; according to this view.
But I have my own doubts. How long can an economy sustain huge subsidies on account of fuel? And how long can a government sustain off-budget subsidies? It is time the government seriously considers raising the fuel prices. The Indian crude basket is reportedly testing the $80 per barrel mark.

Reportedly there are about 998 employment exchanges in the country. Together they have been able to place about 1.10 lakh employees in various government jobs.

China also is joining the lunar probe bandwagon. It is going to launch a space craft called ChangE-1 this month.
In 2003 China became the first Asian country to have put its own astronauts in space.
This year, it has blasted an old satellite into oblivion with a land-based anti-satellite missile. It is the first such test conducted by any nation including the US and Russia.

This is a 1941 film by Orson Welles. It won an Oscar. The movie was about a power-hungry newspaper baron with political aspirations. It was one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time.
The Oscar Award won by this film is now being put on auction.

At present only about 2% of the returns filed are taken up for scrutiny. But the government is thinking of increasing this number to 2.5% from this year onwards.

Indian Bank is coming out with a new format to reach out the unbanked population. Under this plan, there will be a network of kiosks, each with a single person armed with a laptop connected to net and a safety locker to handle cash.
The bank seems to be following management guru CK Prahlad’s idea that low income markets present a prodigious opportunity for business and that these are best served with what he terms ‘single-serve’ packages i.e., a radically different and cost effective way of designing and delivering products and services.

This is a small village in Ambegaon taluka, in Pune district. Under the leadership of one Sopanrao Bhor the villagers decided to float their own company and develop an area into an SEZ. A resolution has been passed to that effect by the village panchayat. There are about 1500 farmers in the village. Each farmer is expected to contribute about Rs. 100,000 as capital. The company will raise more capital against the landholdings and the farmers themselves will develop the SEZ.
The unique features and challenges that this idea is posing:

Will the farmers be able to pull it off? Where will they get the business management expertise from?
The land in the village being apportioned for farming and SEZ is 2,695 acres and 2,507 acres respectively. So, in spite of the SEZ, the farmers will still be cultivating land.

A Lehman Brothers study says that a 1 percentage point decline in the US GDP has the potential to impact India’s GDP growth by 0.2 percent.
US is the destination of 15% of India’s goods exports and about 70% of its services exports. A sharp downturn in India’s exports is likely to have spillover effects on its domestic economy.

In over 60 years, this is the first ever visit by a Russian President to Iran. Mr. Putin gave a call against the presence of foreign military bases in Iran’s northern neighbourhood and warned against attack on Iran.

Indian Current Affairs