Wednesday, September 5, 2012

HEADLINES

• The seniormost Supreme Court judge, Altamas Kabir, will become the 39th Chief Justice of India from September 29 as the current CJI, S.H. Kapadia is all set to retire
• India responded to the advisory issued by Sri Lanka on travel to southern India by assuring the safety of its citizens but also pointed out that important visits should take place after informing the Indian authorities
• Congress MP, Vijay Darda named in FIRs filed by the CBI in the coal mining investigations

NATIONAL NEWS

• SC/ST promotion quota Bill comes up today amid questions marks
  • The Union Cabinet approved a Bill to amend the Constitution to provide reservation to members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government job promotions. The Govt intends to introduce it in the Rajya Sabha today for consideration and passage;
  • The Bill is necessitated to circumvent a Supreme Court verdict striking down reservation benefits for SCs and STs in promotions extended by the then Mayawati government in Uttar Pradesh. Barring the Samajvadi Party (SP), all parties are in favour of passage of the Bill. SP is not opposed to the proposal per se but wants the benefits to be extended to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) as well. The party is of the view that the proposed new law could be struck down by the Court on Constitutional grounds as has happened before;
  • The Bill seeks to amend at least four Articles of the Constitution to enable the Govt to provide quota in promotions to Scs/STs. The Congress has asked BJP for help in passing the Bill in Parliament.
• Plan for TB control endorsed
  • The fifth Joint Monitoring Mission (JMM) of India and the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) has endorsed the National Strategic Plan (NSP) for TB control for 2012-17;
  • The JMM lauded the Government’s efforts in TB control but cautioned that successful implementation of the NSP requires urgent and emphatic expansion in the prioritisation, development, financing and deployment of innovative activities to rapidly detect and correctly treat cases, irrespective of care in public or private sectors. If implemented properly, the NSP can save 750,000 lives over the next five years and transform TB control;
  • To achieve the goals set out in the NSP, the JMM has recommended that the RNTCP prioritise engagement of the private sector, strengthen the supervision systems, extend case-finding to the community-level and support innovation at all levels;
  • It has also recommended focus on the clinical risk groups and socially vulnerable groups and notifying all cases ‘diagnosed’ and developing the necessary laboratory capacity to conduct the quality-assured Drug Susceptibility (DS) test.
• Smoking scenes to be allowed with statutory warning, Govt tells the Supreme Court
  • The Union government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it would soon come out with a gazette notification allowing the film industry to incorporate smoking scenes with statutory warnings alongside;
  • The new rules advise filmmakers to give a 20-second antismoking message as approved by the Health Ministry — with a voice-over of one of the actors seen smoking — to be displayed at the beginning and after intermission. Additionally, a static message would have to be displayed for the duration of the smoking scene;
  • The rules have already been challenged by UTV, producer of Heroine , in which Kareena Kapoor lights up in many frames. The film is scheduled for release on September 21. According to the producer, display of a warning every time the actor smokes would detract viewer attention from the artistic merit of the scene. The Bench gave the government time till September 20 to formally notify the rules;
  • In 2003, the government enacted the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act. In 2005, taking note of the rise in the incidence of on-screen smoking, it further tightened the rules to place a complete ban on showing any tobacco product. Smoking scenes were to be banned in new films;
  • Film producer and director Mahesh Bhatt challenged these rules in the Delhi High Court, which in 2009 struck them down as a violation of the right to creative expression of the moviemaker. The Centre appealed against this judgment, contending that it was entitled to place reasonable restrictions on smoking in the interest of public health. While it was still pending, the Govt said it would notify fresh rules on October 27, 2011 but did not do so;
  • Rules are not expected in light of this case before the Supreme Court. The Centre, in its special leave petition, said the restriction was justifiable on grounds of exercise of the fundamental rights of citizens at large.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• India, Pakistan await Kishenganga award
  • India and Pakistan have concluded their arguments in the dispute over the 330-MW hydro-electric project on Kishenganga, a tributary of the Jhelum in Jammu & Kashmir. Pakistan claimed that the project will harm its share of river waters while India asserted that it was contemplating such a project even before the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 and would otherwise have not agreed to the pact;
  • Pakistan said the project will harm its Neelam-Jhelum hydro-electric project, while India asserted that it had a right to transfer waters between the tributaries of the Jhelum river. Such a right is evident, India argued, given that prior to the treaty’s signature India was contemplating construction of the project at the current location that would include inter-tributary transfer. In this context, New Delhi argued that it will not have consented to any treaty provision that would preclude the realisation of such a project;
  • Putting in the public domain information on the hearing, a Press release of the Indus Waters Kishenganga Arbitration Court said the award of the Court of Arbitration at The Hague will be delivered in six months. Last year on Pakistan’s request the Court in an interim order had restrained India from undertaking any permanent dam works on and above the riverbed but had allowed construction of other components of the dam such as coffer dams, by-pass tunnel and excavation below river-bed level. The Court had inspected the site last June.
• Help heal wounds, not aggravate them - China tells the US
  • China on Tuesday warned the U.S. against interfering in regional territorial disputes, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing for talks expected to focus on the South China Sea. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it hoped “relevant countries” would do more to help, and not harm, regional stability;
  • China has warily viewed the strengthening of U.S. alliances with countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, which have had tensions with Beijing over the South China Sea.
• While agreeing to enhance and maintain peace and tranquillity on the border, India and China on Tuesday decided to conduct the next round of joint military exercises at the earliest. The announcement came at a meeting of the Defence Ministers

EMINENT PERSONS IN THE NEWS

• Girisha Hosanagara Nagarajegowda
  • Girisha won India its first medal at the ongoing Paralympic Games in London. The 24-year-old won the silver medal in the high jump by clearing 1.74 metres to finish behind Iliesa Delana from Fiji. He has a deformity with his left leg;
  • Girisha has already won five international medals, including a gold at the recent Kuwait International Open Athletics Championship.
• Syed Mustafa Siraj
  • Syed Mustafa Siraj was a veteran Bengali writer passed away yesterday. Siraj, a Sahitya Akademi winner for his novel, Aleek Manush, in 1994, penned over 300 short stories and 150 novels. Though Siraj wrote for adults as well, and lately for children, he always strived to bring the scent of the soil to his works.;
  • His was a realist narrative, quite removed from the mysticism and romanticism that characterised much of contemporary Bengali literature. His characters, his plots, settings of his novels and short stories were all about rural Bengal and by extension about Bharat that is increasingly disappearing from the literary map of the country;
  • In recent years, Siraj’s worth came to be appreciated by a wider section of people, thanks to noted Bengali filmmaker Anjan Das, who picked Siraj’s story Ranir Ghater Brittanto to make Faltu, a feature film that, like the book, talked of an orphan’s struggle as part of a village populated by people from the other side of Bengal. Set in Ranighat in Murshidabad, the film only strengthened a feeling among cinemagoers what literati knew all along — Murshidabad, where Siraj was born in 1930, played a central role in his writings. In fact, his origins reflected consistently in his works. His much-lauded Aleek Manush was based in Murshidabad and focused on the different cults within the Muslim community there;
  • Like in Ranir Ghater Brittanto and Aleek Manush , Siraj’s village in Murshidabad formed a recurring landscape in his fiction. Even here, Siraj was against idle nostalgia or mere romanticism and believed that the reddish, arid soil brought with it a lot of hardship;
  • Though his writings were translated into many languages, including English, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil with a couple more in Dogri on the anvil, Siraj was not an easy writer to translate. His style of writing bereft of verbs and articles often challenged translators.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this article on the recent development partnership agency which has been set up under the Ministry of External Affairs. A very important initiative to study from an exam perspective
• Read this article on the food security bill and suggested changes
• Read this editorial on the Basel III norms and the likely impact on the economy

ECONOMY & BUSINESS NEWS

• RBI Governor says Basel III norms to benefit Indian Banking System
  • The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, D. Subbarao, on Tuesday, said that the Basel Committee was working on establishing a minimum set of principles for domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs), including some large banks in India;
  • This committee will also prescribe norms for higher loss absorbency (HLA) capital standards for them as also evolve a sound resolution mechanism for D-SIBs;
  • Basel III seeks to mitigate this externality by identifying global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) and mandating them to maintain a higher level of capital dependent on their level of systemic importance. The list of G-SIBs is to be reviewed annually. At present, no Indian bank appears in the list of G-SIBs;
  • Dr. Subbarao said that effective implementation of Basel III was going to make Indian banks stronger, more stable and sound so that they could deliver value to the real sectors of the economy;
  • The RBI estimates that Indian banks need an additional capital requirement of Rs.5 lakh crore, of which, non-equity capital will be of the order of Rs.3.25 lakh crore while equity capital will be Rs.1.75 lakh crore.