Indian Current Affairs: 24.02.2010

Politics & the Nation

In a slap on the I-T department, the Ranchi high court on Tuesday stayed the transfer of senior I-T official Ujwal Chaudhary who was recently shifted from the investigation of the multi-crore Madhu Koda money laundering scam.
You might have remembered our noting about this high profile case yesterday.

Air India is facing the worst financial crisis in its history and has sought financial help from the government to tide over the crisis. While it has tried to implement a slew of measures to bring down its overall cost structure the airline has largely failed to get desired result.
The airline has accumulated loss of over Rs 8,000 crore as of December 2009 mainly due to high fuel price and excess capacity in the market.
It is well known that Air India is seeking an equity infusion of about Rs. 5,000 crore from the Government to enable it to raise more debt and tide over its financial difficulties. Government has reportedly released an amount of Rs. 800 crores and has asked it to prune its salary expenditure which is way high when compared with private secotr rivals.

The airline’s wage bill of over Rs 3,000 crore annually for about 31,000 employees is 17% of the airline’s total operating expenses. Accoridng to Air India’s management the average salary of Air India staff is 15-20% higher compared with their counterparts in rival carriers Jet Airways and Kingfisher.
Air India is reportedly negotiating wage decrease with its employee unions.
Air India has 230 employees per aircraft, compared with 105-120 in the case of private airlines.

Finance & Economy

Maruti said it is recalling one lakh AStar small cars to fix a problem with a faulty fuel tank part.
A Maruti representative said the problem — which has the potential to lead to fuel leakage — was discovered in November last year and the company started contacting customers from December. Maruti will share the cost of the recall, estimated at Rs 40-50 crore, with its vendor Banco Products. Customers will get replacement gaskets and O-rings at no extra cost.
In a previous major recall in 2001, Maruti called in over 75,000 of its Omnis to rectify defective routing of a fuel hose. In 1997, the company recalled 50,000 Maruti 800s to fix a problem with a faulty pinion in the steering systems.

Globalisation starts with local connectivity. Elaborate with an example of your choice.
If you are ever asked such a question, this write up is going to be a perfect fit as an answer. It comes from the pen of SSA Aiyar and takes Bihar as an example. What better example can one get?

It is a very good debate that appeared in today's Face-Off column.
Worth a read. But let's understand some basics about the recent policy measure and take note of a few snippets from the debate:
The government’s move to shift to a nutrient-based subsidy scheme for non-urea fertilisers is the first step towards comprehensive reforms in the sector. The fixed subsidy on the nutrients is expected to ensure that the fertiliser use remains within the prescribed limit.
The prescribed ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium is 4:2:1 but, over years, we have seen this change to 6:2:1 or even higher, primarily driven by policies favouring nitrogen prices.
At present, we import seven million tonnes of urea, which is a fourth of our annual requirement. Also, we are import-dependent on phosphatic and potassic (P&K) fertilisers to the extent of almost 100% in the form of raw material or finished fertiliser products.
India, as the second-largest consumer of fertilisers.

Estimates suggest that the current power deficit adds up to a gap of at least 67 billion units (read 10% energy shortage), and during peak hours of demand, the shortage is put at over 16,000 mw or a peaking power shortfall of 15%. Worse, while the ambitious target is to add almost 80,000 mw of generation capacity by 2012 — up from 1,40,000 mw utility capacity in 2007-08 — the actual addition on the ground has been just about 3,450 mw in 2008-09. Further, the annual revenue loss in distribution is of the order of Rs 20,000 crore, and counting.
Aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses amount to almost 35%.

The Indian compact car market, which overtook Japan last year to emerge the world’s largest with sales of more than 8.9 lakh vehicles, has been reporting double digit growth for the past several months, making it a hot destination for global carmakers.
Volkswagen on Tuesday pulled the trigger for a major price war in the hatchback segment in the country by rolling out the Polo, one of its most popular models in the world, at a starting price of Rs 4.34 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi).
Toyota, currently the world’s largest carmaker, will get a chance to respond to the Volkswagen move when it rolls out Etios hatchback, a brand new car developed primarily for emerging markets, later this year.

What is meant by this phrase? If you look at what the UK (and in fact most of the countries that were battling recession) did you would understand it very well...
It has cut interest rates, pumped up government spending, printed money like crazy, and nationalised almost half the banking industry. Short of digging Karl Marx out of his London grave, and putting him in charge, it is hard to see how the state could get more involved in the economy.
This is what is meant by Kenesian economics in layman's terms.

Technology

A company called Placecast has come out with this innovative concept. Based on the location of the individual, SMS based ads will be sent to her, if she opts to receive such ads.
Imagine that you are near a restaurant at around lunch time. The restaurant can send you an SMS saying that seats are available or that it is offering a discount on lunch etc.
Placecast is a location-based mobile ad company in San Francisco. It uses a practice called geo-fencing, which draws a virtual perimeter around a particular location. When someone steps into the geo-fenced area, a text message is sent, but only if consumers have opted in to receive messages.
To determine a cell phone's location, Placecast uses techniques including a phone's GPS signal, location data provided by carriers to companies that sell it to Placecast and information gleaned from triangulating the phone's distance to cell towers.

Language Lessons

Turn sharply; change direction abruptly; Shift to a clockwise direction
eg: The options, tellingly, veer from the sublime to the ridiculous, depending on who is deciding, of course.

Political propaganda (especially communist propaganda) communicated via art and literature and cinema

Indian Current Affairs