Wednesday, Mar 21st, 2012

HEADLINES

• Setback to Government as court rejects review plea in Vodafone case
• Kingfisher to cut international flights
• Lalit Modi declared bankrupt in London over the 65,000 euros he owed to the page group, an international securities and risk assessment company

NATIONAL NEWS

• Rhinoceros census in the Pobitora wildlife sanctuary going on. The density of the Rhinoceros has increased from 84 to 93 according to the 2009 census. Pobitora wildlife sanctuary Assam has the highest density of Rhinoceros in the world.
  
  
• ICPS comes to the rescue of destitute children
  • Five girls caught in trafficking, were rescued and rehabilitated in separate incidents in recent months under the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS), the flagship programme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), Government of India.
    
    
• Set back to centre as court rejects review plea in Vodafone case
  • In a setback to the Union government, the Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected its plea for a review of the court's January 20 ruling that the Income Tax Department did not have the jurisdiction to impose Rs.11,000 crore in tax on the overseas deal between Vodafone International Holdings and Hutchison Group.
    
    
• Kudumbashree acclaimed as a national role model.
  • The Kudumbasree poverty eradication mission, having played an important role in the restructuring of the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) into the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), is a national role model much commended by the 11th Plan Working Group on poverty eradication
  • The objective is to reduce poverty among the rural poor by promoting diversified and gainful self-employment and wage employment opportunities.
    
    
• Planning commission lowers the poverty line
  • The Planning Commission on Monday released the latest poverty estimates for the country showing a decline in the incidence of poverty by 7.3 per cent over the past five years and stating that anyone with a daily consumption expenditure of Rs. 28.35 and Rs. 22.42 in urban and rural areas respectively is above the poverty line.
  • At the national level, anyone earning Rs. 672.8 monthly that is earning Rs. 22.42 per day in the rural area and Rs. 859.6 monthly or Rs. 28.35 per day in the urban area is above the poverty line.
  • The total number of people below the poverty line in the country is 35.46 crore as against 40.72 crore in 2004-05. In rural areas, the number has come down from 32.58 crore five years ago to 27.82 crore and the urban BPL number stands at 7.64 crore as against 8.14 crore five years ago.
  • poverty has actually gone up in the north-eastern States of Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland.
  • Big States such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh registered only a marginal decline in poverty ratio, particularly in the rural areas, whereas States such as Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttarakhand saw about 10 per cent decline in poverty over the past years.
  • States with high incidence of poverty are Bihar at (53.5 per cent), Chhattisgarh (48.7 per cent), Manipur (47.1 per cent), Jharkhand (39.1), Assam (37.9 per cent) and Uttar Pradesh (37.7 per cent)
  • In rural Bihar and Chhattisgarh, nearly two-third of the SCs and the STs are poor where as in States like Manipur, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh it is more than 50 per cent.
  • In urban areas, 34.1 per cent of SCs, 30.4 of STs and 24.3 per cent OBCs fall under this category against 20.9 per cent for all classes.
  • Among religious groups, only 11.9 per cent of Sikhs fall in this category while only 12.9 percent of Christians have the lowest proportion in urban areas.
  • Under the Gini Coefficient used, there was a marginal increase in inequality in rural areas from 0.27 per cent during 2004-05 to 0.28 per cent during 2009-10. This meant money was concentrated in a fewer hands. In urban areas, where money had already been with fewer people, the situation deteriorated more sharply, from 0.35 to 0.37.
  • Inequality rose sharply in rural areas of even a well-off State like Punjab (0.26 to 0.29), Kerala (0.29 to 0.35), Bihar (0.19 to 0.22) and Madhya Pradesh (0.24 to 0.28) and Assam (0.18 to 0.22). There was no change in Odisha, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.Inequality came down in the rural areas of Goa, Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Haryana and Chhattisgarh.
  • In the urban areas except in Chhattisgarh, Goa and Tamil Nadu, inequality rose in all other States.

INTERNATIONAL

• An article on the International forest day which is celebrated in the northern hemisphere in the autumnal equinox(Mar 21) and in the southern hemisphere in the vernal equinox (Sep 21)
  
  
• BRICS meet to address mistrust
  • Top Chinese officials said on Tuesday that working with India under the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) umbrella would help address long-persisting mistrust between the neighbours, adding that they expected specific bilateral outcomes from President Hu Jintao's visit to New Delhi next week for the fourth summit between the fast-rising emerging economies.

• Swiss plan to shut nuclear plant by 2022
  • Switzerland gets about 40 per cent of its power from five nuclear reactors. The country plans to phase out nuclear power by 2034
  • BKW Energie one of Europe's oldest commercial nuclear reactors has said the Muehleberg plant will continue to provide electricity for 10 years despite a Swiss court ruling earlier this month that the reactor's licence should expire at the end of June 2013.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• Editorial on the budgetary outlays for the health sector