09.09.2010

Politics & the Nation

• A bit of history about Periyar and the movements led by him
• Periyar is known for his anti-Brahmin movement in Tamilnadu.  The seeds of the movement were sown in 1925 when EV Ramasamy Naicker, known as Periyar, or the elder, walked out of the Indian National Congress convention after the then Brahmin-dominated party refused to consider a resolution seeking proportional representation. Periyar’s reasons for seeking change were strong. In 1914, of the of the 650 graduates in then Madras Province, 452 were from the Brahmin community. Of the 15 elected for the All India Congress Committee, 14 were Brahmins.
• Periyar led the Self-Respect and the Anti-Hindi movements of the aristocrats-led Justice Party formed to further the non-Brahmin interests in the four southern states. The party was renamed Dravidar Kazhagam in 1944 with rationalism and atheism as its main planks and Karunanidhi and his mentor CN Annadurai among the top leadership.
• Karunanidhi, Jayalalithaa and Ramachandran have their roots in the Dravidian Movement.
• Caste census next year
• The Centre proposes to conduct caste census as a stand-alone exercise between June and September 2011, three months after completion of Census 2011.
• A recommendation for conducting a full caste census was made by the group of ministers constituted to look into the question of including caste as one of the parameters for Census 2011. It will come up for clearance at the Cabinet meeting on Thursday.
• As per the GoM’s recommendations, the caste census form will enlist the name, age and other personal details of the respondent, besides the caste he/she quotes. The caste will be entered purely as per the claims of the respondents, and no verification will be done at the enumerator’s level.
• The data will then be tabulated to arrive at the caste composition of the country on the basis on individual claims. The Census Commission will then publish these results of the caste census in a report.
• An excellent observation on sustainable development, excerpted from today’s op-ed piece:
• The point is not that nature has to be forever preserved in its pristine form, nor that nature needs protection from humans. The point, rather, is that human beings sometimes need protection from the consequences of their own shortsighted actions that might force nature to strike a new equilibrium, one in which human survival becomes that much more difficult. Sustainability, in other words, is not to protect nature and the environment in themselves, but to protect human society from its own thoughtless actions, whether burning a hole in the ozone layer, or saturating the atmosphere with noxious gases.

Finance & Economy

• HC says Vodafone must pay tax on Hutch buy
• You might remember the notings made about this dispute in our blog earlier.
• The dispute arose out of the acquisition of a controlling stake in Hutchison Essar by Vodafone in 2007. The total value of the transaction then was $11 bn.  The IT department claimed that Vodafone should have paid capital gains tax on the transaction.  Vodafone claimed that the transaction took place in Cayman Islands and hence not within the reach of Indian taxation authorities.
• The current Bombay High Court judgement identifies two parts to the transaction: one of a controlling interest that was through a share transfer in Cayman Islands comprising a maximum of 52% stake; the second related to contractual agreements, in the form of options that increased Vodafone’s rights to 67%. In its transaction, Vodafone acquired 52% from Hutchison in an overseas transaction while 15% was held by Analjit Singh and Asim Ghosh, who were in India.
• Vodafone will appeal to the Supreme Court in the next two-to-four weeks, said senior lawyer Harish Salve, who is representing Vodafone.
• The final outcome of the case may influence valuations and structuring of M&A transactions between offshore entities with underlying assets in India.
• On the dispute between MCX-SX and SEBI
• MCX is basically a commodities exchange that wants to foray into stock exchange business also.  It was recognised as a stock exchange in September 2008, on the condition that promoters would prune their holdings to the Sebi-prescribed limit of 5% within a year.  
• Now SEBI has issued a notice to MCX-SX asking it to justify as to why the regulator should approve its proposal to launch trading in equities and other products on the ground that the exchange has not conformed to existing public shareholding norms. These norms were laid down in the Manner of Increasing and Maintaining Public Shareholding (MIMPS) regulations issued by Sebi.  
• The MIMPS norms cap a single shareholder’s stake in a stock exchange at 5%, with a waiver for strategic investors such as local stock exchanges, depositories, clearing corporations, banks and insurance companies that can hold up to 15%.
• While complying with these norms and reducing their holding, the promoters of MCX-SX — Financial Technologies and MCX — had issued warrants to themselves, which could technically allow them an opportunity to raise their holdings at a later date if regulations changed. This, according to Sebi, is not in keeping with the spirit of the regulations.
• GEAC to be rechristened as Environment Appraisal Panel
• The Centre has pruned the mandate of the proposed Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India. The body will now deal only with safety and efficacy issues, leaving decisions on commercialisation of biotech products to respective administrative ministries.
• The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) currently housed in the environment ministry would be rechristened as the Environment Appraisal Panel under the proposed Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India.
• The chairman of the environment appraisal panel will report directly to the BRAI chairman. In the event of a difference of opinion between the panel and the regulator, BRAI will pass a speaking order.
• On GDP deflators
• Here is a very good ET in the Classroom column that explains about price deflators and how they are used in arriving at GDP figures.
• Banks will have to keep more reserves from 2013
• Global regulators reached a compromise on capital ratios for banks that will introduce higher capital requirements over a 5-10 year period starting in 2013. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision drafted key points of the so-called Basel III reforms. The proposal will be the basis for the September 12 meeting of the Group of Governors of Central Banks and Heads of Banking Supervision Authorities who will decide on the reform framework.
• Policy makers are seeking to raise the quality and quantity of reserves held by banks to avoid another financial crisis. Governments have been wrangling over the details with France and Germany among those concerned that their banks and economies wouldn’t be able to bear the burden of tougher capital requirements until economic recoveries took hold. Group of 20 leaders meet in November in Seoul to approve the rules.
• The Basel III reforms aim to makes banks worldwide more resilient in the light of the experiences during the financial crisis.

Technology

• Will search engines read your mind?
• 'Yes' is the answer, if you believe what is stated in this article that appeared in today's ET.  An interesting article to read.   Take a look.  Some excerpts for our keeps:
• Internet market research company comScore says over 50,000 searches are done every second. According to a 2009 comScore survey, 30% of searches are abandoned in frustration and two-thirds of the rest require users to refine their queries before getting the desired result.
• According to IDC, the search haystack, today, is 1 zettabyte of information — one followed by 21 zeroes. If all the 6 billion people in the world posted messages on Twitter continuously for 100 years, that’s the information pile they would create.
• Around 1995, search engines updated content about once in three months. You could return from a holiday and see the same result on a particular search. Even in 2000, they refreshed content daily, weekly or monthly. Today, they do it by the second.
• The evolution of search engines
• 1990-95  Archie, Gopher, Wanderer are the world’s first search engines. They mainly do text searches and updates were occasional — 1-3 months. Search engines have a vague understanding of words.
• 1995-2000 Search pages are refreshed weekly or monthly. In a heap of about 100 search engines, AltaVista, Yahoo, Lycos, Inktomi and Dogpile dominate. In 1997, Google drops in with a superior technology that captures more and delivers better results.
• 2000-05 Search engines start to understand words in a context. Google’s PageRanking system, which ranks results based on the number of clicks they have received, dominates. Microsoft starts MSN Bot, the origins of what is now Bing.
• 2005-10 Images, maps, videos and news are added: Early stages of real-time search, and picture and video search. Microsoft revamps MSN Search in 2009, renames it Bing. Social media (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) add a new dimension, even as niche search sites emerge.
• 2010-15 Development of a personalised search engine
• by tracking and improving on users’ search history. Non-text mediums — voice, gestureenabled, songs, audio files — get better. As do local, mobile and social search. Cloud computing-based search too improves results.
• 2015-20 Search engines are mind readers. They not
• only understand your needs better, but also have the ability to execute — for example, book a table at a restaurant.
• Some mind numbing figures about Internet
• 50,000: Number of searches done every second
• 50 billion: Number of web pages. About 56% are in English
• 120 million:  Number of websites. About 74% are commercial (.com)
• 62%: Increase in quantity of data on the internet in 2009
• 40 billion: Number of pictures on Facebook
• 24 hours:  Duration of videos added to YouTube every minute
• $60 billion:  Revenues from search ads (next to search results) in 2014 Talking Heads

Language lessons

• shenanigan: Noun
• Reckless or malicious behaviour that causes discomfort or annoyance in others; The use of tricks to deceive someone (usually to extract money from them)
• flub: Verb
• Make a mess of, destroy or ruin
• Noun: An embarrassing mistake
• eg: ...we are not the only people who flub Wine 101.
• faux pas: Noun
• A socially awkward or tactless act
• solecism: Noun
• A socially awkward or tactless act; An ungrammatical usage of words