19 September 2015

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Centre sees red in Assam’s safe passage offer to Paresh Baruah  –   (Security)

  •       There is a proposal for a blackbuck conservation reserve at Ummathur and Bagli villages in Chamarajanagar district to sustain their numbers in the wild.
  •      The concept was mooted by the Chief Conservator of Forests of Chamarajanagar Circle under section 36-A of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.
  •      A threatened species, which was bordering on the verge of extinction due to extensive hunting in the pre-Independence days, their numbers are confined to a few reserves scattered across India.

 

Electricity for all houses by 2022: Modi  –    (Governance)

  • With different scholars having different takes on whether Netaji Subhas Bose died in an air crash in Taiwan in 1945, the controversy over his disappearance is unlikely to die soon.

 

Only 10% of NGOs file returns: CBI  –   (Governance)

  •       India, the U.S. and Japan are set to raise their trilateral engagement to the ministerial level, with a meeting of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry planned on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly
  •       “Noting India’s ‘Act East’ policy and the United States’ rebalance to Asia, the leaders committed to work more closely with other Asia Pacific countries through consultations, dialogues and joint exercises. They underlined the importance of their trilateral dialogue with Japan and decided to explore holding this dialogue among their Foreign Ministers,” the joint statement had said.

 

Evidence Act likely to be amended  –    (Security)

  •       The Mandal 2.0 politics proposed by the Lalu-Nitish alliance seeks to aggregate smaller caste groups by calling the BJP a party of the upper castes. Mr. Modi’s campaign talks about ‘jungle raj’, a euphemism for the Yadav social dominance
  •      Forcing the dominant castes to loosen their grip on power while integrating numerically insignificant caste groups has been an essential component of Hindutva 2.0. This strategy is being put on test in Bihar.

 

Is physical relationship with minor wife not rape, asks Supreme Court  –    (Indian Polity)

  • India today has a unique opportunity to rekindle the global nuclear disarmament momentum, and to kick-start this ambitious but useful project, New Delhi should offer to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
  • India’s resistance to the CTBT has lost relevance as it does not intend to conduct any more tests; signing the Treaty can be a bargaining chip in the new global nuclear order

 

1965: a war with no winners  –   (International Relation)

  •        On Sunday, Nepal adopted its first democratic Constitution, a historic step for a nation that has seen war, a palace massacre and devastating earthquakes since a campaign to create a modern state began more than 65 years ago.
  •        It creates seven states in a secular, federal system, but is opposed by some groups who wanted to re-establish Nepal as a Hindu nation, and others who feel it is unfavourable to people in the plains, near India.
  •       Nepal’s 239-year old monarchy was abolished in 2008, seven years after an unhinged crown prince killed the king and eight members of his family at the height of a Maoist uprising. Disgruntled royalist politicians voted against the charter on Wednesday, while some parties from the southern lowlands abstained.

 

A Diplomatic Failure  –   (International Relation)

  •        India’s merchandise exports in 2015-16 are forecast to decline to $265-268 billion, significantly lower than $310.5 billion in the previous fiscal, mainly due to sharp erosion in commodity prices globally, according to a study by Assocham.
  •       The country’s outbound shipments stood at about $314.4 billion in 2013-14, $300.4 billion 2012-13, and $306 billion in 2011-12.

 

Environment favourable for policy action by RBI: Sinha  –    (Economics)

  •       In one of the most anticipated events in the global economic calendar the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to hold rates for now thereby prolonging global uncertainty.
  •        In maintaining the status quo the Fed appears to have bowed to strong headwinds originating from a slowing Chinese economy. It is also recognition that despite its resilience, the U.S. economy is not strong enough to do away with stimulus

 

Looking for reform success, Modi readies rescue plan   –    (Economics)

  •        The U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision last week to leave interest rates unchanged offers an amber signal for Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan as he prepares to make the fourth bi-monthly monetary policy statement for the fiscal year on September 29.
  •       The Fed’s move in delaying the much-anticipated start of ‘normalisation’ of interest rates provides some elbow room to Mr. Rajan as it removes, for now, the risk of rate arbitrage seeking capital outflows.

 

 

Rajan still worried about inflation  –    (Economics)

The clamour for a rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) grew with the U.S. Fed leaving ultra-low rates intact, Governor Raghuram Rajan on Friday kept all guessing about his next monetary policy move saying the ‘key task’ is to keep inflation low.

He further said the ‘excessively low’ level of retail inflation at 3.6 per cent last month was due to ‘base effects’, excluding which it should be around mid-5 per cent.

“The key task is to keep inflation low, not just today but well into the future,” the Governor said while addressing industrialists and bankers at an event here.

 

 

Myanmar’s e-revolution aids transparency, media control   –   (International Relation)

  • In the new age of election campaigns, it wouldn’t seem surprising that the two most prominent leaders in the country, Aung San Suu Kyi, and former speaker Thura Shwe Mann, include Facebook and social media in campaign strategies for general elections on November 8.
  • But in Myanmar, it is one more symbol of the dramatic changes that have marked the country in the past few years.

 

Japan allows its military to fight abroad for first time since WW-II   –   (International Relation)

  • Japan’s Parliament passed contentious security bills into law in the early hours of Saturday, in a move that could see Japanese troops fight abroad for the first time in 70 years.
  • The approval at the Upper House loosens post-World War II constraints on use of force by the military to its own self-defence only.
  • The legislation, passed by the more powerful lower house in July, sparked debate about whether the nation should shift away from its pacifist ways to face growing security challenges

 

Fifty years and none the wiser    –   (International Relation)

  • Next week will mark 50 years since the formal end to fighting in the 1965 War. Anniversary ruminations can expose deficiencies in India’s handling of affairs then that still plague the country.
  • The precise sins of omission or commission might differ, but they all arise from a common root: the inability to approach India’s interest with the minimum levels of thinking, objectivity or discipline, appropriate to the issues involved.
  • With great-power potential and First World capabilities, the country languishes in Third World bad habits.