Wednesday, 14th march, 2012

HEADLINES

• Half of India's homes have cell phones but no toilets
• Sri Lankan rights issue rocks parliament

NATIONAL NEWS

• Half of India's homes have cell phones but no toilets
  • The data on housing, household amenities and assets cast new light on a country in the throes of a complex transition, where millions have access to state-of-the-art technologies and consumer goods — but a larger number lacks access to the most rudimentary facilities.
  • Only 46.9 per cent of the total 246.6 million households have toilet facilities. Of the rest, 3.2 per cent use public toilets. And 49.8 per cent ease themselves in the open.
  • Two-thirds of households continue to use firewood, crop residue, cow dung cakes or coal for cooking — putting women to significant health hazards and hardship.
  • The data also show that just 32 per cent of the households use treated water for drinking and 17 per cent still fetch drinking water from a source located more than 500 metres in rural areas or 100 metres in urban centre.
  • There has been an 11 percentage point increase in households using electricity, from 56 per cent to 67 per cent. The rural-urban gap for this indicator has dropped by seven percentage point, from 44 per cent to 37 per cent.
  • India, the data show, is now overwhelmingly made up of nuclear families — a dramatic change from just a generation ago, where joint families were the norm. Seventy per cent of the households consist of only one couple. Indian families are overwhelmingly likely — 86.6 per cent of them — to live in their own houses, but 37.1 per cent live in a single room.
  • There has been a nine percentage point jump in the numbers of households who own a two-wheeler, 45 per cent own a cycle, which remains the primary mode of transport.
  • There has been a 16 per cent increase in the number of households watching television, but a 15 per cent decline in the use of radios and transistors. A total of 47.2 per cent of households own a television; only 19.9 per cent have either radio or transistors.
    
    
• Kerala police arrest Prabhu Daya captain Gordon Pereria
  • The Kerala police on Tuesday arrested Gordon Charles Pereira, Captain of m.v. Prabhu Daya — the vessel suspected to be involved in a mid-sea collision with a fishing trawler off the Kerala coast on that led to the death of five fishermen.
    
    
• India keen on larger economic foot print in afganistan
  • India is keeping itself engaged in a wide number of areas with the focus on the gradually unfolding economic opportunities.
  • New Delhi is hoping to activate the Partnership Council which will push forward the India-Afghan strategic partnership agreement (SPA).
  • The Partnership Council, to be chaired by the two countries' respective Foreign Ministers, will have working groups to flesh out the intentions expressed in the SPA such as capacity building in the security, education and civil society sectors besides scouting for opportunities in the hydrocarbon and mineral sectors.
  • In addition to eyeing six petroleum blocks in the placid northern Afghanistan and copper mines in four different parts of the country — some wrecked by violence and others quiet, India will also be looking to safeguard the hard-won “jewel of Afghanistan's mining sector” — the Hajigak iron ore mine.
  • The India-built road which connects the Iranian border with Afghanistan's garland highway is already in place and a road from the Afghanistan-Iran border to Chabar is functional.
  • India is keeping a close eye on three factors — the military posture to be adopted by NATO after 2014, contours of a strategic pact that Afghanistan and the U.S. plan to sign and the political process involving the still-recalcitrant Taliban groups.
    
    
• Pradhan Mantri Gram sadak yojana to be transferred to the MoRD
  • The Planning Commission has cleared the transfer of the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana(PMAGY) to the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
  • The PMAGY was announced in 2009-10 for integrated development of all villages with more than 50 percent scheduled caste population. Presently, there are 44,000 such villages.
  • As a pilot project, it has been implemented in 1,000 villages in Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu with an allocation of Rs. 100 crore with each village to get Rs. 10 lakh per year.
  • The annual funding was raised to Rs. 20 lakh per village in September and Rs. 194 crore has been spent in these villages.
    
    
  INTERNATIONAL NEWS
• Chinese lawmakers propose all-weather border highway
  • China's lawmakers have proposed the construction of a new highway linking southwestern Yunnan with Tibet, which would for the first time provide year-round access to a remote region which borders Arunachal Pradesh;
  • The new highway, which would include two 1,600-metre-tunnels, would also cut short the route between the two regional capitals of Kunming and Lhasa by more than 300 km, from Nujiang, a Yunnan prefecture that borders the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR);
  • The highway would run through Nyingchi, a Tibetan county that borders Arunachal Pradesh, which China claims and refers to as “south Tibet”. The current highway, which is located at an altitude of 4,000 metres, was “almost impassable” in winter months because of hazardous conditions. China has said this road is only being built for economic development, but India is worried about the defence implications of the same.
    
    
• Israel and Islamic Jihad to hold fire
  • Israel and militants in Gaza agreed on Tuesday to an Egyptian-brokered truce deal after four days of violence in which 25 Gazans died and 200 rockets were fired at Israel;
  • The ceasefire came into force after four days of violence that began on Friday with Israel's assassination of the head of the Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group.
    
    
• Srilankan point on the UN resolution unlikely to find takers as it argues that the date for implementation of the lessons learnt report should be when the last report was submitted to its parliament; Amnesty International has called for an independent probe

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this article on the compulsory licensing granted by the Indian patents office in relation to a cancer drug being marketed by Bayer in India. This is the first time that India is enforcing the compulsory licensing provision which was available as part of the WTO
• Read this article on Indo-brazil learnings that can be discussed at the upcoming BRICS summit in Delhi on March 29
• Read this editorial on the right to education act

ECONOMICS

• Bayer to challenge ruling
  • Bayer AG said, it was mulling ways to challenge a ground-breaking Indian ruling allowing a local firm to produce a vastly cheaper copy of a cancer drug made by the German pharmaceutical giant.
  • The ruling on Monday by India's Controller-General of Patents marked the first time a so-called ‘compulsory licence' for production of a patented drug has been granted in India, known as a global generics drug powerhouse.
  • Under the ruling, closely watched by global drugmakers, Bayer must give a licence for cancer drug Nexavar to Indian company Natco Pharma.
  • Natco will pay Bayer a 6 per cent royalty on net sales of the drug and sell the medicine for Rs.8,800 ($175) a month. That sum represents a 97 per cent reduction on the Rs.2.80 lakh that Bayer charges in India for a monthly dose of the drug, which is used to extend the lives of patients suffering from advanced kidney and liver cancers.

• Shale gas policy likely by next fiscal-end
  • The shale gas policy is proposed to be announced tentatively by the end of next fiscal, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Jaipal Reddy informed the Rajya Sabha;
  • Based on the findings of studies on the potential of resources, the policy is to be finalised after incorporating views of the ministries/departments concerned. Mr. Reddy said that considering the importance and potential of alternative source of oil and gas, the government has initiated steps for identification of prospective areas and assessment of shale gas resources in the country as well as to formulate the policy.
  • In this regard, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Indian and the U.S. governments on shale gas resources in November 2010 during the visit of the U.S. President. Under the MoU, both the countries would cooperate in various areas of shale gas development, including shale gas resource assessment and technical studies on shale gas exploration in India.
  • Accordingly, United States Geological Survey carried out shale gas resource assessment in three Indian basins (KG, Cauvery and Cambay) in January this year. Further, the Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons has assigned Central Mine Planning & Design Institute, Ranchi, with the task of identification of areas and assessment of shale gas potential in Damodar and Sohagpur sedimentary basins.