06.03.2008

• India wins its case against US at WTO
• This is regarding the anti-dumping duty imposed by US on our shrimp exports.
• India complained to the WTO that the anti-dumping duty and the enhanced continuous customs bond requirement (EBR) by the US on Indian shrimp has impacted export of marine products to the US.
• The WTO upheld India’s contention that the duty and the EBR are inconsistent with relevant WTO agreements.
• Because of this win, the anti-dumping duty has been brought down to 1.09% from 10.17%.
• Suresh Prabhu, the former Power minister and presently MP is one of those rare politicians who have a thinking head on their shoulders. I like his views on many a subject. Today he wrote a very good piece on the measures that the policy makers have to take for accelerating agriculture growth. While I recommend reading it at least once, I excerpt for you some of his suggestions for our record. Read his full article here.
• Key issues that need immediate attention of farm policymakers include:
• Intensify participatory and location-specific malady-remedy approach to bridge yield gaps
• Institutionalise integrated management of natural resources and inputs
• Promote eco-technologies for sustainability
• Prevent post-harvest losses and strengthen value addition
• Create and strengthen integrated rural employment security
• Streamlined institutional support to the needy
• Ensure remunerative prices
• Ensure competitiveness
• Haptic interface
• It is a new interface developed to enable people to experience the most realistic sense of touch, perceiving textures or feeling hard surfaces with the help of a computer.
• This technology relies on magnetic levitation and uses a single light-weight moving part.
• On child adoption
• NRIs and PIOs (Persons of Indian Origin) who wish to adopt children in India face a lot of legal hurdles.
• The Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 does not allow Muslims, Christians, Jews and Parsis to become a child’s adoptive parents. They can only be appointed as ‘guardians’.
• A child’s adoption deed is not enough to apply for immigration. The foreign rules stipulate that the adoptive parents have to obtain guardianship orders from a guardian judge under the Hindu Minority Guardianship Act, 1956 for Hindus and a similar order under the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 for non-Hindus.
• The Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act does not allow non-Hindus to adopt Hindu children.
• Government to allow MVNOs?
• Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO) are companies that do not own any cellular infrastructure but buy airtime from existing operators and then market and sell it using their own brand.
• UK’s Virgin and BT Mobile are examples of MVNOs. Japan also has its KDDI operating in the MVNO space.
• At present there are 360 MVNOs operating globally.