Politics & the Nation
- Padma awards announced
- Tagore awards presented for 8 litterateurs
- Eight litterateurs were awarded on Monday, the first Tagore Literature Awards 2009 for their contributions to Bengali, Bodo, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Telugu.
- Instituted by the Sahitya Akademi and Samsung Electronics, the winners were chosen from across different genres of essays, poetry, biography and autobiography for literary works between 2005 and 2008.
- First Lady of the Republic of Korea Kim Yoon-ok presented the awards. The awardees are:
- Alok Sarkar for “Apapabhumi” (Bengali),
- Brajendra Kumar Brahma for “Raithaihala” (Bodo),
- Bhagwandas Patel for “Mari Lokyatra” (Gujarati),
- Rajee Seth for “Ghame-Hayat Ne Mara” (Hindi),
- Naseem Shafai for “Na Thsay Na Akas” (Kashmiri),
- Chandrasekhar Kambar for “Shikara Soorya” (Kannada),
- Jaswant Singh Kanwal for “Punya Daa Chanan” (Punjabi) and
- Kovela Suprasannacharya for “Antharangam” (Telugu).
- Each award carries prize money of Rs. 91,000, a trophy and a citation.
- The move by the government to act against deemed universities backfires in Supreme Court
- Acting on the reports of a high-powered review committee and a task force, the Government decided to de-recognise 44 deemed universities across the country on the plea that they are not having the requisite infrastructure and are being run as family fiefdoms.
- Unimpressed by the move which kept the educaitonal future of over 2 lakh students, the court asked the Centre to furnish a clear ‘roadmap of programme’ to protect the interest of students.
- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak is Chief Guest at R-Day parade
- Something about the laying of wreaths at the Amar Jawan Jyoti:
- Looks like it is the privilege only of the PM, the Defence Minister and the Defence Chiefs. BTW do you know that the memorial is for World War I heroes?
- Any idea as to why the President doesn't lay the wreath?
- Sonia calls for de-criminalising politics
- Speaking at a function to mark 60 years of the Election Commission of India (ECI), Congress president Sonia Gandhi reopened the debate on de-criminalising electoral politics by exhorting parties “to evolve a consensus” on barring those with criminal records from contesting polls.
- Despite the Congress chief’s plea about de-criminalising politics, the party had no qualms about giving tickets to as many as 24 candidates with criminal backgrounds in just the first phase of the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, according to figures released by an NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms. BJP came second with 23 candidates followed by BSP (17) and SP (10).
Finance & Economy- Why is the government's move to continue providing subsidy to consumers for cooking gas and kerosene for five more years, not good?
- Providing subsidies is not good from the point of view of reining in the fiscal deficit. Mounting subventions for subsidies mean diversion of savings by the government from investment to consumption, raising the cost of capital in the process.
- The government must cut expenditure on subsidies to create more fiscal space for investments in both physical and social infrastructure.
- Subsidies as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) stood at around 1.8% of GDP in 1990-91 and fell to 1.4% of GDP in 1999-2000.
- By 2008-09 the government had budgeted subsidies at Rs 66,537 crore, but the bill shot up nearly four-fold to touch Rs 2,19,582 crore — a whopping 4.1% of GDP.
- How strongly linked is India's economy to global economic currents?
- India remains substantially dependent on exports to fuel GDP, on external commercial loans to fuel investment, and on foreign institutional portfolio inflows to fuel its stock markets. So, linkage to global trends has become a new economic fundamental of India.
- India's milk production
- India is the world's largest milk producer. It accounts for 15% of the global production. Its production has risen to 115 mn tonnes.
Language Lessons
- limerick: Noun
- A humorous verse form of 5 anapestic lines with a rhyme scheme aabba. Look at the following verse, you will understand it. Notice the line endings.
- There was a young lady from Niger/Who smiled as she rode on a tiger/They returned from the ride/With the lady inside/And the smile on the face of the tiger.
- anapestic: Adjective
- (of a metric foot) characterized by two short syllables followed by a long one
- thingamajig: Noun
- Something unspecified whose name is either forgotten or not known
- eg: However miraculous the thingamajig turns out to be - all rumors point to some kind of tabletlike device - it can't be more remarkable than the control that Apple and Jobs have over their audience.
- omerta: Noun
- A code of silence practised by the Mafia; a refusal to give evidence to the police about criminal activities
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