Monday, September 10, 2012

HEADLINES

• Bal Thackeray says Sushma Swaraj should be the NDA's PM candidate; Congress says that NDA has the habit of counting chickens before they hatch
• Award-winning political cartoonist and anti-corruption and Internet freedom crusader Aseem Trivedi is arrested by police on grounds of sedition and insulting the national flag and constitution in one of his cartoons
• Verghese Kurien, father of “White Revolution” and founder of the cooperative dairy movement in the country, died on Sunday at the age of 90
• Salman Rushdie's new book “Joseph Anton” narrates his own story of being on the run for 10 years after an Iranian fatwa issued against him for writing “Satanic Verses”
• The TRAI has asked telecom companies to de-activate the international calling facility in pre-paid numbers and restore it only after a subscriber gives his consent for ISD facility

NATIONAL NEWS

• ISRO scores a 100 with the launch of PSLV-C21
  • A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C21) blasted off from Sriharikota on Sunday and placed two foreign satellites in orbit, accomplishing the Indian Space Research Organisation’s 100th mission, a milestone in the country’s space journey;
  • The PSLV carried SPOT-6, a 712-kg French earth observation satellite and injected it into an orbit of 655-km altitude, inclined at 98.23 degrees to the equator. Proiteres, a 15-kg Japanese microsatellite, was put into orbit as an additional payload;
  • Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a host of dignitaries watched the flight path on electronic screens, as the 44-metre tall PSLV accomplished its task, reinforcing the fact that it is the ISRO’s workhorse, with 21 successful missions in a row;
  • SPOT-6, an optical remote-sensing satellite capable of imaging the earth with a 1.5-metre resolution, is built by Astrium SAS, a European space technology company. Proiteres is meant to study the powered-flight of a small satellite by an electric thruster and to observe Japan’s Kansai district with a high-resolution camera.
• Include Millets in noon meal scheme, Centre tells States
  • The Agriculture Ministry has asked the States to include millets in the mid-day meal scheme to increase the demand for the cereal and, thereby, enhance farm incomes.Millet crops or coarse cereals are known for their high nutritional value and are effective in controlling diabetes and obesity. But the area under millets has been steadily declining though they are suited for arid and semi-arid regions, besides adaptability to moisture stress;
  • The commonly cultivated millets under rain-fed conditions are sorghum (jowar), finger millet (ragi or mandwa), pearl millet (bajra), foxtail millet, barnyard millet, proso millet, kodo millet and little millet;
  • The Ministry said the introduction of millets in the meal scheme would go a long way in increasing the nutritional standards of schoolchildren. Further, the Department of Food and Public Distribution System had agreed to facilitate supply of millets but the response from the States for allocation for the meal scheme was not very encouraging;
  • The Agriculture Ministry last year introduced a scheme — Initiative for Nutritional Security through Intensive Millet Promotion (INSIMP) to boost cultivation. But it has not picked up mainly due to a lack of adequate demand for millets.
• India, Pakistan ink liberal visa regime
  • In what was described by Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar as the first step towards normalisation of relations with India, the long-pending visa agreement to ease travel was inked in Islamabad on Saturday during S.M. Krishna's visit to Pakistan;
  • The agreement was signed after the conclusion of the Foreign Minister-level engagement at the end of the second round of the resumed dialogue process. The new visa regime — the first major overhaul since 1974 — in particular eases travel restrictions for businessmen and introduces a new category of group tourism. Besides, persons aged above 65 will be issued visa on arrival;
  • The regime also mandates a time frame for issuing visas. From the earlier indefinite time taken to issue a visa, the two missions have now been tied down to a 45-day period for deciding on an application. Visas will continue to be city-specific, but now in place of three cities, applicants can hope to visit five in one visit. And now visitors can enter and exit the country from different checkpoints and change the mode of travel. Earlier, the port of entry and exit had to be the same, and the mode of transport could not be changed;
  • The agreement had been initialled in May during the Home/Interior Secretaries talks here, but the signing had been delayed as Pakistan wanted it to be done at the political level. This being the first ministerial engagement in either country since May, Mr. Krishna came authorised by the Cabinet Committee on Security to sign the agreement which, in effect, is the domain of the Home Minister;
  • Another significant decision taken by the Foreign Ministers pertained to the cross-Line of Control (LoC) confidence-building measures (CBMs). The cross-LoC travel will be expanded to include visits for tourism and pilgrimage. Such visits to designated sites will initially be from the Chakoti-Uri and Rawalakot-Poonch crossing points;
  • Like the visa talks, the cross-LoC travel proposal also keeps the people of the two countries at the central focus of the bilateral relationship between the countries.
• Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) will commence production at its uranium mine at Tummalapalle in Vemula mandal in Kadapa district in the next two to three months. Nearly 3,000 tonnes of uranium would be excavated and processed and about 250 tonnes of pure uranium would be produced per year
• Key ISRO members say that they were considering undertaking the Indian mission to study the conditions on Mars in October and November next year. The Mission would have to be taken up only when Mars would come close to the earth. These conditions would prevail in 2013, 2016 and 2018. The extended version of PSLV will be used in this and there will be an elliptical orbit

EMINENT PERSONS IN THE NEWS

• Verghese Kurien, father of the “White Revolution”
  • Verghese Kurien graduated from Loyola College and joined the Guindy College of Engineering, both in Chennai. He underwent specialised training at the Imperial Institute of Animal Husbandry and Dairying in Bangalore and went to the Michigan State University in the US on a Govt of India scholarship to complete his Masters’ degree in mechanical engineering, with dairy engineering as a minor subject. He completed it in 1948;
  • Kurien was assigned a job at the Government Creamery at Anand in Gujarat to serve for the bond period. He completed the period and got the release order from the Government Creamery, but remained bonded to Anand. Sardar Valabhbhai Patel had assigned him the task of solving the problems of the farmers in his constituency, Kaira, whenever the Home Minister (Patel) received a representation from poor farmers;
  • After Sardar Patel, it was another “Patel” who tied Kurien to Anand. At the request of Tribhuvandas Patel, who had undertaken a mission, at the behest of Sardar Patel, to free the poor farmers and milk producers from the clutches of Polson, a powerful multinational company, Kurien joined the Anand Milk Union Limited (AMUL) in 1949;
  • AMUL later made way for a larger milk-producing project, the Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers Union, and still later the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation. But it never lost sight of the original brand — AMUL — which is today a household name all over the country; people have come to identify milk and milk products with AMUL;
  • The success of the AMUL experiment attracted the then Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri. He requested Kurien to help him replicate the AMUL model across the country. And the National Dairy Development Board was born in 1965 with the famous “milkman” as its founder-chairman;
  • As Kurien was unwilling to leave Anand, the tiny town was made the headquarters of one of the largest central sector boards – the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB)! Despite spending over six decades in Gujarat, knew little Gujarati. But he still had excellent interaction with farmers;
  • Though power changed hands at the Centre, no succeeding government ever changed Kurien, who served at the NDDB for a record 33 years before handing over the baton to his one-time protégé Amrita Patel in 1998, albeit following some differences over the “corporatisation” of the cooperative movement;
  • Not only the NDDB, Kurien also was the pioneer-founder of the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA), Anand, in 1979, which still is the only institute of its kind in the country providing management training in rural technologies;
  • Kurien remained the chairman of the IRMA till 2006, the year he also gave up the chairmanship of the GCMMF, which he was heading since 1973, both due to old-age and some controversies over his alleged “style of functioning.” All the institutions he founded and headed remained based in Anand as the powerful milkman could fend off all bureaucratic and political misadventures to claw into the rural turf;
  • He was the recipient of several distinguished Indian and international awards. To give a short selection of them: nationally, the Padmashri (1965); Padmabhushan (1966); Krishi Ratna (1986); and the Padma Vibhushan (1999). Outside India, it was the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership (1963); the “Wateler Peace Prize” Award of the Carnegie Foundation for the year 1986; the World Food Prize award for the year 1989; the “International Person of the year” by the World Dairy Expo, Wisconsin, U.S. (1993), the “Ordre du Merite Agricole” by the Government of France (in March 1997); and the Regional Award 2000 from the Asian Productivity Organization, Japan;
  • From milk, Kurien also ventured into cooperatives dealing in oil and oilseeds, vegetables and fruits — the later, albeit, with limited success. If you have time, read this article about him (not important as the main achievements have already been provided above).

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this interesting article which discusses how geography is actually playing an important role in world politics
• Read this editorial on the 100th Mission of the ISRO and its past achievements
• Read this article on the challenges that the Govt will face in implementing the amendments to the child labour law which will ban all forms of child labour using children under the age of 14
• If you have time, read this article on the declining support for Israel in the international community