23 August 2015

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Migrants in the land of expatriates  –   (Social Issues)

·  Kerala’s key attraction as a destination of domestic migrant labourers is the high wage levels in the State as compared to the States of their origin.

·  But life is not easy for the migrant labourers. Most live in groups, often seven or eight persons sharing a single room, and up to 40 or 50 a building, with little by way of toilet facilities. In many construction sites, the workers live in shacks and in the rural areas, they live mostly in semi-permanent tenements and huts, with bare minimum facilities.

· On one hand the migrant workers suffer from unhygienic living conditions and on the other hand they even have to suffer the resentment of native people of the state.

India can press for Dawood’s extradition  –   (International Relations)

 

Under the Indian Extradition Act, 1962, an extradition can take place from a country with which India has an extradition treaty or not. Though India and Pakistan do not have a treaty, India can still press Pakistan to hand over Dawood

 

 

Bengal tops the list in human trafficking  –   (Social Issues)

· The highest number of cases of human trafficking in the country is from West Bengal, which alone accounts for 20 per cent of all reported cases in India.

· Tamil Nadu recorded the second highest number

Centre likely to waive retrospective tax on FIIs  –   (Economics)

 

· The Centre is likely to waive the controversial minimum alternate tax (MAT) on capital gains made by Foreign Institutional Investors, (FIIs) prior to April 1, 2015 on the recommendation of A.P. Shah Committee report.

· FIIs have argued that MAT is applicable only to domestic companies that had their base in India. By virtue of not being established in India, they should be ‘exempted.’ They have also alleged inconsistency and called for avoiding arbitrary application.

 

 

Interest on gold deposits  –  (Economics)

· Lenders do not want to raise interest on gold deposits much beyond one per cent, bankers said, which could derail a government plan to cut massive imports by mobilising tonnes of gold now stored in households and temples. The low interest rate makes any gold related scheme quite ineffective.

· The government is planning to launch a gold related scheme this year to lure into circulation some of the 20,000 tonnes of idle gold, melting it down and lending it to jewellers, to feed Indians’ ravenous appetite for the metal.