13 October 2015

Home

 

 

Plural India comes together to condemn attack  –    (Indian Polity)

  • Mumbai does belong to Maharashtra, but it also belongs to the nation — moreover, it is an international city, said Sudheendra Kulkarni, chairman of the Observer Research Foundation, in Marathi sending a firm message to the Shiv Sena, which is said to be behind an attack on him on Monday.
  • He was speaking at the launch of a book, Neither a Hawk nor a Dove: An Insider’s Account of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy , by Pakistan’s Former Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.

 

 

Police wean 40 youths from militancy in south Kashmir  –    (Security)

  • The Jammu and Kashmir police have weaned away around 40 young men, mostly from south Kashmir, from joining the terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen by tracking their activities on social media, a senior Home Ministry official said.
  • Security agencies in Kashmir are grappling with a growing number of youths joining the militant ranks and the authorities are nipping these attempts in the bud by identifying the probable recruits on the basis of their activities.

 

 

Alarming times for free expression, says Rushdie  –    (Indian Polity)

  • Booker Prize winning author Salman Rushdie on Monday joined the growing chorus of protests by writers and poets against spread of “communal poison” and “rising intolerance” in the country even as more authors decided to return their Sahitya Akademi awards.

 

Plural India comes together to condemn attack   –   (Indian Polity)

  • Mumbai does belong to Maharashtra, but it also belongs to the nation — moreover, it is an international city, said Sudheendra Kulkarni, chairman of the Observer Research Foundation, in Marathi sending a firm message to the Shiv Sena, which is said to be behind an attack on him on Monday.
  • He was speaking at the launch of a book, Neither a Hawk nor a Dove: An Insider’s Account of Pakistan’s Foreign Policy , by Pakistan’s Former Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.

 

India firmly behind Palestine: Pranab  –    (International Relation)

  • President Pranab Mukherjee on Monday held talks with his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah where he reiterated India’s economic and political support for the Palestinians, and announced projects for capacity building in Gaza and West Bank.
  • The President has handed over a cheque of $5 million to the Palestinian government as a budgetary support, Anil Wadhwa, Secretary East at the External Affairs Ministry, told the accompanying media delegation after high-level talks.

 

 

Textiles Ministry alleges large-scale import of cheap jute bags  –    (Indian Polity)

  • The Union Textiles Ministry has unearthed a major racket in large-scale import of cheap jute bags from Nepal and Bangladesh by Indian manufacturers, many of whom were supplying these to government agencies after putting their own seals.
  • The Jute Packaging Materials (Compulsory Use in Packing Commodities) Act, 1987, mandates that jute bags supplied to government agencies for packaging foodgrains and sugar under the Public Distribution System (PDS) must be manufactured by the supplier, using only domestically produced raw jute.

 

 

Misleading ad on blood still on air    –    (Indian Polity)

  • As per the Indian laws, human blood is treated as a ‘drug’ under the Drugs & Cosmetics (D&C) Act. During the HIV/AIDS crisis, the Indian government made it mandatory for any donated blood to be tested for HIV 1&2 antibodies, giving the Blood Safety Programme to the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO).
  • The NACO has written to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), a self-regulatory body, to have that advertisement pulled off air as it does not meet the ASCI’s standards of honest representations, said an official in the Ministry.

 

 

The multiple costs of death penalty  –   (Indian Polity)

  • The Law Commission’s recent weighty report that favours giving up the death penalty, except in cases of terrorism, should also motivate the government into swift action.
  • The cost of prisoners on death row, the complex task of ensuring a painless mode of carrying out the judicial order and the growing international rejection of the death penalty must weigh against the pain of a victim’s family seeking justice.

 

 

Anger beyond words   –   (Indian Polity)

  • Over the past week, a growing number of writers have returned literary honours that had been awarded to them in recognition of their work — and in doing so reminded the state of its failure to protect the last man standing. What started with writer Nayantara Sahgal returning the Sahitya Akademi award she won in 1986, led to a wave of protests. The others also chose to give up their precious Sahitya Akademi awards, given by writers to writers.
  • Their protest is against an impassive state that remains a silent spectator, effectively complicit in the act of writers and rationalists being hunted down, and a Muslim man being lynched by his own neighbours for allegedly storing beef in his home. Their rejection of the honour is a symbolic reminder of the times, as a wave of intolerance cascades from Dadri even to the most cosmopolitan of Indian cities, Mumbai, threatening to choke the air.

 

 

The path to economic recovery  –    (Economics)

  • Adividend payment of Rs. 66,000 crore from the Reserve Bank of India, the highest in its 80-year history, helped tip India’s fiscal balance to surplus in August.
  • A combination of the pick-up in the Centre’s revenue receipts and its declining expenditures, especially on subsidies, helped keep the fiscal deficit during the first five months of the current financial year under Rs. 3.7 lakh crore, lower than the Rs. 3.97 lakh crore during the corresponding period last year.

 

‘Improving our knowledge of the world’   (Science and Technology)

  • Nobel Laureate Arthur B. McDonald on how the neutrino experiments can provide a fuller picture for the very basic laws of physics.
  • On October 6, Takaaki Kajita, Chief Scientist of Super-Kamiokande Collaboration, University of Tokyo, and Arthur B. McDonald, chief scientist at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) Collaboration, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for proving that neutrinos change identities or ‘flavours’ from one type to another over time.

 

 

India not obliged to arrest President Bashir  –    (International Relation)

  • In less than a fortnight, India will host the incumbent Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir as part of the Third India-Africa Forum Summit, expected to be the largest gathering of world leaders in India since the Non-Aligned Summit in New Delhi in 1983. However, the event, in view of President Bashir’s attendance, may not pass without its share of controversy.
  • President Bashir’s arrival will represent a serious challenge to the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued two separate arrest warrants against him. The first was issued on March 4, 2009, when the President was charged with war crimes over the conflict in Darfur, earning the ill-repute of becoming the first sitting head of state issued with an arrest warrant by the ICC.

 

 

India, China begin counter-terrorism drills  –    (International Relation)

  • India’s attempt to keep China engaged in a military-cooperation cycle while it bolsters defence ties with the United States and Japan is becoming strikingly illustrated this week with the joint counter-terror drills in Kunming, as well as the Malabar-2015 naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal.
  • The joint Hand-in-Hand counter-terrorism exercises between India and China started on Monday, following the arrival of 175 personnel from the Naga Regiment of the Eastern Command in Kunming.

 

 

British economist Angus Deaton wins Nobel for studies on income, poverty   –    (International Relation)

  • Professor Angus Deaton, a British economist, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science on Monday for improving the accuracy of basic economic gauges, including measures of income, poverty and consumption.
  • Prof. Deaton, 69, of Princeton, is best known for his insight that economic averages such as measures of national income could be misleading, because they concealed important variations among individuals.

 

Industrial output up 6.4% in Aug. CPI inflation at 4.4% in September  –    (Economics)

  • Growth in retail inflation accelerated to 4.4 per cent in September following three months of deceleration. Consumer Price index inflation was 3.7 per cent in August. Industrial production, as measured by the Index of Industrial Production, grew a robust 6.4 per cent in August compared to 4.2 per cent in July.
  • This is the highest growth in the IIP since October 2012.