Current Affairs 11/01/2014 to 17/01/2014
Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 10:37 am1.Mr. Rajeev Kher has been appointed as the new Secretary in Department of Commerce. Mr. Kher is a 1980-batch IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre and at present serving at the post of Special Secretary, Department of Commerce under Ministry of Commerce and Industry. He will succeed Mr. S R Rao who is retiring on January 31, 2014.
2.The 13th edition of joint exercise by the Indian Coast Guard and its Japanese counterpart held approximately at 20 nautical miles off Kochi. The bilateral exercise titled ‘Sahayog-Kaijin 2014’ was successfully conducted by both the countries.
3.The Aam Aadmi Party-led government has withdrawn the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail in Delhi. The government formally wrote to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to disapprove the setting up of FDI-funded multi-brand retail stores in the State. With this withdrawal, the national capital territory has become the first State Government to withdraw permission for FDI-funded retail stores.
The decision is bound to impact the overall FDI scenario not just in Delhi but also in associated states viz. Haryana, Rajasthan , Punjab, etc, because Delhi is the hub for northern states.
Why such a decision by Delhi Govt.?
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is of the view that though the FDI provides a wide range of choice to consumers but it also creates unemployment as was seen in many countries. That’s why, the foreign participation into the supermarkets sector would worsen the city’s unemployment problem and therefore the government is opposed to it. The manifesto of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party too opposed the policy of FDI in multi-brand retail.
4.President Pranab Mukherjee bestowed the Sunil Gangopadhyay Memorial Award for Excellence in Bengali Literature for 2012 and 2013 upon eminent poet and litterateur Nirendranath Chakravarty and Sankha Ghosh at the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata. The award was instituted in 2012 by ‘The Bengal’, a Kolkata-based NGO.
5.The social networking site, Facebook has acquired Banglore-based start up Little Eye Labs. Little Eye is a tool that helps Android app developers to measure, analyze and optimize their apps. It helps visualize the app’s behavior and estimates the app’s power, memory and network data consumption trends.
6.Tata Motors launched the Nano Twist- a variant of its small car Nano. The Nano Twist comes with a power steering, which the earlier Nano models did not have.
7.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for a 2,800 MW nuclear power plant near Gorakhpur village in the Fatehabad district of Haryana.
The Haryana Nuclear Power (or Haryana Anu Vidyut Pariyojna) Project (HNPP) will have four indigenously developed pressurized heavy water reactors with a capacity of 700 MW each.
The first phase (1,400 MW) of the 2,800-MW HNPP would be completed by 2020-21 at a cost of over Rs. 21,000 crore.
Around 1,500 acre land of villages Gorakhpur, Kajalheri and Badopal of district Fatehabad has been acquired for the project and Rs 450 crore paid to 847 families of these villages as compensation.
8.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) signed an agreement to enhance the maximum amount of the Bilateral Swap Arrangement (BSA) between the two countries to $50 billion. The agreement signed by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda. The BSA shall be effective until December 3, 2015.
With this agreement, the current BSA, effective for 3 years from 2012 to 2015, has been raised from the original size of $15 billion.
Outcome: The expansion of the BSA will contribute to the stability of global financial markets including emerging economies.
Aim of BSA: To address possible short-term liquidity difficulties and supplement the existing international financial arrangements and is one of the efforts in strengthening mutual cooperation between India and Japan.
9.The 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony was held at the Beverly Hills, California. The winners of various awards are as follows -
Best Motion Picture Drama: 12 Years a Slave
Best Motion Picture Musical/Comedy: American Hustle
Best Director in Motion Picture-Drama: Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity
Best Actor in Motion Picture-Drama: Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club
Best Actress in Motion Picture-Drama: Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine
Best Actor in Motion Picture or Musical or Comedy: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street
Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: Amy Adams for American Hustle
Best Actor in a Supporting role in Motion Picture: Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club
Best Actress in a Supporting role in Motion Picture: Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle
Best Animated Film: Frozen
Best foreign language film: The Great Beauty (Italy)
10.The insurance sector regulator, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) set up a 10-member committee to study the options of allowing 100 % Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in insurance intermediaries, Third-Party Administrators (TPA), surveyors and loss assessors.
The 10-member committee :
Headed by: IRDA Senior Joint Director, Suresh Mathur and has officials from the regulator, insurance council, insurance companies as well as brokers and will submit its report in three months.
Objective: To study whether there is a case for raising the FDI limit in insurance entities (other than insurance companies) and if yes, to what extent. To study the options of allowing 100 % Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in insurance intermediaries, Third-Party Administrators (TPA), surveyors and loss assessors.
Current Status: the FDI limit for these entities is 26 % in line with the limit stipulated for insurance companies.
11.The iconic but controversial former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon (85) passed away after spending eight years in a coma following a stroke.
12.National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) reduced refinance rate for banks and other lending agencies by 0.20 % to promote rural credit and rural infrastructure.
Revised rates: The revised rate of interest on refinance for a period of five years for commercial, state cooperative, regional rural and primary urban cooperative banks will be 9.70%, down from 9.90%. The new rates are effective from January 7.
13.Awami League chief Ms Sheikh Hasina (66) sworn in as Prime Minister of Bangladesh for the third time along with a 48-member cabinet. President Abdul Hamid administered the oaths of office and secrecy to Ms Hasina and her new cabinet members at the Bangabhavan presidential palace in Dhaka.
14.India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has given environmental clearance to South Korean steel manufacturer POSCO for its Rs 52,000 crore steel plant in Odisha. The company who made the largest FDI investment in India has got the clearance after a long wait of eight years to begin with the project. POSCO intends to build the steel plant with an annual production capacity of 12 million tons. The approval has been granted a week ahead of South Korean President Park Geun Hye’s visit to India.
15.India’s trade deficit with its largest trading partner China reached a humongous $ 31.42 billion as the bilateral trade fell by 1.5% in 2013, recording a declining trend for the second consecutive year.
16.Well-known Social activist Ila Pathak (80) passed away.
Ila Pathak:
Born in 1933, she was an active member of Movement for Secular Democracy (MSD) and vice-president of Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties’ (PUCL). She became the founder secretary of Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group (AWAG). She was also a former professor of H K Arts College and head of India Chapter of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Major contributions of Ila Pathak:
Pathak played a major role in movement for justice to the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots, protest against Patan P T C College gangrape incident, etc. She was also a supporter to Manipur’s Irom Sharmila’s protest against Armed Forces Special Powers’ Act (AFSPA).
18.A newly constructed railway platform in Gorakhpur, U.P. entered into the Limca Book of World Records for being world’s longest railway platform.
Platform No. 1 of the Gorakhpur is 1366.33 metres with ramp and 11355.40 metres without it.
Gorakhpur is headquarter of North Eastern Railways zone.
The World’s longest railway platforms are:
Gorakhpur railway station (Uttar Pradesh, India): 1,366.33 m (4,483 ft)
Kollam Junction Railway Station (Kerala, India): 1,180.5 m (3,873 ft)
Kharagpur (West Bengal, India): 1,072.5 m (3,519 ft)
19.On the eve of Petrotech Conference, the Government has given a respite to the gas exploration industries by notifying the new Gas Pricing Formula which will double the rate of gas to $8.4 per unit from April 2014, for all domestic output.
20.Diversified business house Trident Group became the first corporate to use Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) for payment of salaries to its employees. The facility launched in the presence of Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nandan Nilekani.
21.For the first time in India, an indigenously developed stratospheric balloon penetrated into the Mesosphere. It is developed at the Balloon Facility, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad under the High Altitude Balloon Development Project (HAA). Till yet, only balloons from US and Japan have accomplished this achievement.
22.Scientists have developed a new and simple blood test that can be used to predict whether a patient is about to have a heart attack by testing for Circulating Endothelial Cells (CECs). They found that the presence of CECs in a person’s blood after a heart attack was something not seen in healthy controlsNote: A heart attack is caused by the slow buildup of cholesterol plaque in the arteries, a process known as atherosclerosis or “hardening of the arteries.” When the plaque builds up too much, it can rupture, causing a sudden blood clot to form over the rupture site. This can ultimately lead to a heart attack or stroke.
23.The market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) made it compulsory for all investments into Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) funds to be made through banking channels, and not in cash, to prevent any money laundering activities through such schemes.
24.The Supreme Court held that a person can be made an accused by the trial court in case evidence crops up during the proceedings even if he has not been named in the FIR or charge sheet.
A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice P. Sathasivam stated that Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) empowers the trial court to summon a person as an accused despite his name not being mentioned by the investigators in the First Information Report (FIR) and charge sheet. This new ruling will be helpful to solve the cases, especially the 2G scam and other high profile cases.
25.The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to establish a national regulator for environmental clearances. The apex regulator will supervise grant of clearances and implementation of forest policy and environmental laws. The apex court has given the Centre time till March 31 to appoint the regulator and set up offices in “as many States” as possible under Section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986.
26.The Government of India has started the country’s first comprehensive adolescent health programme- Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram, which will also focus on adolescents’ reproductive health.
Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram
Focus: Health needs of 24.3 crore adolescents which makes 21% of India’s population in India.
A holistic and participative programme instead of a ‘doctor-driven’ effort.
Strategy: RMNCH+A stands for (Reproductive, Maternal, New born, Child Health + Adolescent).
New dimensions: Mental health, nutrition, substance misuse, gender based violence and non-communicable diseases.
Community based interventions through peer educators, and is supported by collaborations with other Ministries and State governments, knowledge partners and research.
Strives to make adolescents aware even before the occurrence of any disease or problem, so that they could make informed decisions and choices.
Using new technologies and social media platforms to reach the adolescents in their own spaces, with strategic partnerships with communities and peers.
27.A high-level panel of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested that the central bank should gradually abolish the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR), the portion of deposits that banks must compulsorily keep in government securities.
At present, SLR is at 23% while most banks keep it around 27% as state-backed bonds often provide attractive rates at low risk.
As per the Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households, headed by Nachiket Mor (former executive director ICICI Bank):
SLR should be gradually abolished
A Separate category of banks should be created to cater to low-income households with a minimum entry capital requirement of Rs. 50 crore — 1/10th of the currently mandatory Rs. 500 crore.
Banks should provide facilities for withdrawal, payment and deposit within 15 minutes walking distance anywhere in the country.
All Indians above 18 to have a “full-service, safe, and secure electronic bank account” by 2016.
The priority sector lending cap should be increased from the current 40% to 50%.
Interest subsidies and loan waivers should be abolished.
What is SLR?
Apart from keeping a portion of deposits with the RBI as cash (CRR), banks are also required to maintain a minimum percentage of their net demand and time liabilities with them at the end of every business day, in the form of gold, cash, government bonds or other approved securities. This minimum percentage is called Statutory Liquidity Ratio.
28.The Election Commission of India (EC) has cancelled tied-up with US-based internet heavyweight, Google to assist it manage online voter registration and facilitation services ahead of the India’s General Election 2014.
The decision came after when major political parties and cyber security experts raised concerns that it could be used for spying.
In a flash, the commission has decided to fall back on its good old partner, the government-controlled National Informatics Centre (NIC), to facilitate voters to check their enrolment status online and locate their polling station, etc.
Note: As per Google’s proposal to the EC, the internet giant had offered its search engines to help voters find out their enrolment status online, and locate their respective polling booths, complete with directions through Google Maps.
29.As per report titled, ‘Estimation of retreat rate of Gangotri glacier’, the Gangotri glacier is receding like other glaciers in the Himalayas and its volume and size is shrinking between Gaumukh and Bhojbasa. The appraisal of retreat measured by using rapid static and kinematics GPS survey. The study is conducted by scientists from G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development in Almora.
30.Indian Pitta, a bird endemic to the Himalayan foothills and Western Ghats, was spotted at Aravalli Biodiversity Park near Vasant Kunj in Delhi recently. As per ornithologists, Indian Pitta, a small and colourful bird which is mainly seen in closed-canopy forests, was spotted in Delhi after 60 years.
2.The 13th edition of joint exercise by the Indian Coast Guard and its Japanese counterpart held approximately at 20 nautical miles off Kochi. The bilateral exercise titled ‘Sahayog-Kaijin 2014’ was successfully conducted by both the countries.
3.The Aam Aadmi Party-led government has withdrawn the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail in Delhi. The government formally wrote to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) to disapprove the setting up of FDI-funded multi-brand retail stores in the State. With this withdrawal, the national capital territory has become the first State Government to withdraw permission for FDI-funded retail stores.
The decision is bound to impact the overall FDI scenario not just in Delhi but also in associated states viz. Haryana, Rajasthan , Punjab, etc, because Delhi is the hub for northern states.
Why such a decision by Delhi Govt.?
Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal is of the view that though the FDI provides a wide range of choice to consumers but it also creates unemployment as was seen in many countries. That’s why, the foreign participation into the supermarkets sector would worsen the city’s unemployment problem and therefore the government is opposed to it. The manifesto of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) party too opposed the policy of FDI in multi-brand retail.
4.President Pranab Mukherjee bestowed the Sunil Gangopadhyay Memorial Award for Excellence in Bengali Literature for 2012 and 2013 upon eminent poet and litterateur Nirendranath Chakravarty and Sankha Ghosh at the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata. The award was instituted in 2012 by ‘The Bengal’, a Kolkata-based NGO.
5.The social networking site, Facebook has acquired Banglore-based start up Little Eye Labs. Little Eye is a tool that helps Android app developers to measure, analyze and optimize their apps. It helps visualize the app’s behavior and estimates the app’s power, memory and network data consumption trends.
6.Tata Motors launched the Nano Twist- a variant of its small car Nano. The Nano Twist comes with a power steering, which the earlier Nano models did not have.
7.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for a 2,800 MW nuclear power plant near Gorakhpur village in the Fatehabad district of Haryana.
The Haryana Nuclear Power (or Haryana Anu Vidyut Pariyojna) Project (HNPP) will have four indigenously developed pressurized heavy water reactors with a capacity of 700 MW each.
The first phase (1,400 MW) of the 2,800-MW HNPP would be completed by 2020-21 at a cost of over Rs. 21,000 crore.
Around 1,500 acre land of villages Gorakhpur, Kajalheri and Badopal of district Fatehabad has been acquired for the project and Rs 450 crore paid to 847 families of these villages as compensation.
8.The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Bank of Japan (BOJ) signed an agreement to enhance the maximum amount of the Bilateral Swap Arrangement (BSA) between the two countries to $50 billion. The agreement signed by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda. The BSA shall be effective until December 3, 2015.
With this agreement, the current BSA, effective for 3 years from 2012 to 2015, has been raised from the original size of $15 billion.
Outcome: The expansion of the BSA will contribute to the stability of global financial markets including emerging economies.
Aim of BSA: To address possible short-term liquidity difficulties and supplement the existing international financial arrangements and is one of the efforts in strengthening mutual cooperation between India and Japan.
9.The 71st Annual Golden Globe Awards ceremony was held at the Beverly Hills, California. The winners of various awards are as follows -
Best Motion Picture Drama: 12 Years a Slave
Best Motion Picture Musical/Comedy: American Hustle
Best Director in Motion Picture-Drama: Alfonso Cuaron for Gravity
Best Actor in Motion Picture-Drama: Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club
Best Actress in Motion Picture-Drama: Cate Blanchett for Blue Jasmine
Best Actor in Motion Picture or Musical or Comedy: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street
Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: Amy Adams for American Hustle
Best Actor in a Supporting role in Motion Picture: Jared Leto for Dallas Buyers Club
Best Actress in a Supporting role in Motion Picture: Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle
Best Animated Film: Frozen
Best foreign language film: The Great Beauty (Italy)
10.The insurance sector regulator, Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) set up a 10-member committee to study the options of allowing 100 % Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in insurance intermediaries, Third-Party Administrators (TPA), surveyors and loss assessors.
The 10-member committee :
Headed by: IRDA Senior Joint Director, Suresh Mathur and has officials from the regulator, insurance council, insurance companies as well as brokers and will submit its report in three months.
Objective: To study whether there is a case for raising the FDI limit in insurance entities (other than insurance companies) and if yes, to what extent. To study the options of allowing 100 % Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in insurance intermediaries, Third-Party Administrators (TPA), surveyors and loss assessors.
Current Status: the FDI limit for these entities is 26 % in line with the limit stipulated for insurance companies.
11.The iconic but controversial former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon (85) passed away after spending eight years in a coma following a stroke.
12.National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) reduced refinance rate for banks and other lending agencies by 0.20 % to promote rural credit and rural infrastructure.
Revised rates: The revised rate of interest on refinance for a period of five years for commercial, state cooperative, regional rural and primary urban cooperative banks will be 9.70%, down from 9.90%. The new rates are effective from January 7.
13.Awami League chief Ms Sheikh Hasina (66) sworn in as Prime Minister of Bangladesh for the third time along with a 48-member cabinet. President Abdul Hamid administered the oaths of office and secrecy to Ms Hasina and her new cabinet members at the Bangabhavan presidential palace in Dhaka.
14.India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has given environmental clearance to South Korean steel manufacturer POSCO for its Rs 52,000 crore steel plant in Odisha. The company who made the largest FDI investment in India has got the clearance after a long wait of eight years to begin with the project. POSCO intends to build the steel plant with an annual production capacity of 12 million tons. The approval has been granted a week ahead of South Korean President Park Geun Hye’s visit to India.
15.India’s trade deficit with its largest trading partner China reached a humongous $ 31.42 billion as the bilateral trade fell by 1.5% in 2013, recording a declining trend for the second consecutive year.
16.Well-known Social activist Ila Pathak (80) passed away.
Ila Pathak:
Born in 1933, she was an active member of Movement for Secular Democracy (MSD) and vice-president of Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties’ (PUCL). She became the founder secretary of Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group (AWAG). She was also a former professor of H K Arts College and head of India Chapter of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Major contributions of Ila Pathak:
Pathak played a major role in movement for justice to the victims of 2002 Gujarat riots, protest against Patan P T C College gangrape incident, etc. She was also a supporter to Manipur’s Irom Sharmila’s protest against Armed Forces Special Powers’ Act (AFSPA).
18.A newly constructed railway platform in Gorakhpur, U.P. entered into the Limca Book of World Records for being world’s longest railway platform.
Platform No. 1 of the Gorakhpur is 1366.33 metres with ramp and 11355.40 metres without it.
Gorakhpur is headquarter of North Eastern Railways zone.
The World’s longest railway platforms are:
Gorakhpur railway station (Uttar Pradesh, India): 1,366.33 m (4,483 ft)
Kollam Junction Railway Station (Kerala, India): 1,180.5 m (3,873 ft)
Kharagpur (West Bengal, India): 1,072.5 m (3,519 ft)
19.On the eve of Petrotech Conference, the Government has given a respite to the gas exploration industries by notifying the new Gas Pricing Formula which will double the rate of gas to $8.4 per unit from April 2014, for all domestic output.
20.Diversified business house Trident Group became the first corporate to use Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) for payment of salaries to its employees. The facility launched in the presence of Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) Chairman Nandan Nilekani.
21.For the first time in India, an indigenously developed stratospheric balloon penetrated into the Mesosphere. It is developed at the Balloon Facility, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad under the High Altitude Balloon Development Project (HAA). Till yet, only balloons from US and Japan have accomplished this achievement.
22.Scientists have developed a new and simple blood test that can be used to predict whether a patient is about to have a heart attack by testing for Circulating Endothelial Cells (CECs). They found that the presence of CECs in a person’s blood after a heart attack was something not seen in healthy controlsNote: A heart attack is caused by the slow buildup of cholesterol plaque in the arteries, a process known as atherosclerosis or “hardening of the arteries.” When the plaque builds up too much, it can rupture, causing a sudden blood clot to form over the rupture site. This can ultimately lead to a heart attack or stroke.
23.The market regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) made it compulsory for all investments into Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) funds to be made through banking channels, and not in cash, to prevent any money laundering activities through such schemes.
24.The Supreme Court held that a person can be made an accused by the trial court in case evidence crops up during the proceedings even if he has not been named in the FIR or charge sheet.
A five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice P. Sathasivam stated that Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) empowers the trial court to summon a person as an accused despite his name not being mentioned by the investigators in the First Information Report (FIR) and charge sheet. This new ruling will be helpful to solve the cases, especially the 2G scam and other high profile cases.
25.The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to establish a national regulator for environmental clearances. The apex regulator will supervise grant of clearances and implementation of forest policy and environmental laws. The apex court has given the Centre time till March 31 to appoint the regulator and set up offices in “as many States” as possible under Section 3(3) of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986.
26.The Government of India has started the country’s first comprehensive adolescent health programme- Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram, which will also focus on adolescents’ reproductive health.
Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram
Focus: Health needs of 24.3 crore adolescents which makes 21% of India’s population in India.
A holistic and participative programme instead of a ‘doctor-driven’ effort.
Strategy: RMNCH+A stands for (Reproductive, Maternal, New born, Child Health + Adolescent).
New dimensions: Mental health, nutrition, substance misuse, gender based violence and non-communicable diseases.
Community based interventions through peer educators, and is supported by collaborations with other Ministries and State governments, knowledge partners and research.
Strives to make adolescents aware even before the occurrence of any disease or problem, so that they could make informed decisions and choices.
Using new technologies and social media platforms to reach the adolescents in their own spaces, with strategic partnerships with communities and peers.
27.A high-level panel of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested that the central bank should gradually abolish the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR), the portion of deposits that banks must compulsorily keep in government securities.
At present, SLR is at 23% while most banks keep it around 27% as state-backed bonds often provide attractive rates at low risk.
As per the Committee on Comprehensive Financial Services for Small Businesses and Low-Income Households, headed by Nachiket Mor (former executive director ICICI Bank):
SLR should be gradually abolished
A Separate category of banks should be created to cater to low-income households with a minimum entry capital requirement of Rs. 50 crore — 1/10th of the currently mandatory Rs. 500 crore.
Banks should provide facilities for withdrawal, payment and deposit within 15 minutes walking distance anywhere in the country.
All Indians above 18 to have a “full-service, safe, and secure electronic bank account” by 2016.
The priority sector lending cap should be increased from the current 40% to 50%.
Interest subsidies and loan waivers should be abolished.
What is SLR?
Apart from keeping a portion of deposits with the RBI as cash (CRR), banks are also required to maintain a minimum percentage of their net demand and time liabilities with them at the end of every business day, in the form of gold, cash, government bonds or other approved securities. This minimum percentage is called Statutory Liquidity Ratio.
28.The Election Commission of India (EC) has cancelled tied-up with US-based internet heavyweight, Google to assist it manage online voter registration and facilitation services ahead of the India’s General Election 2014.
The decision came after when major political parties and cyber security experts raised concerns that it could be used for spying.
In a flash, the commission has decided to fall back on its good old partner, the government-controlled National Informatics Centre (NIC), to facilitate voters to check their enrolment status online and locate their polling station, etc.
Note: As per Google’s proposal to the EC, the internet giant had offered its search engines to help voters find out their enrolment status online, and locate their respective polling booths, complete with directions through Google Maps.
29.As per report titled, ‘Estimation of retreat rate of Gangotri glacier’, the Gangotri glacier is receding like other glaciers in the Himalayas and its volume and size is shrinking between Gaumukh and Bhojbasa. The appraisal of retreat measured by using rapid static and kinematics GPS survey. The study is conducted by scientists from G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development in Almora.
30.Indian Pitta, a bird endemic to the Himalayan foothills and Western Ghats, was spotted at Aravalli Biodiversity Park near Vasant Kunj in Delhi recently. As per ornithologists, Indian Pitta, a small and colourful bird which is mainly seen in closed-canopy forests, was spotted in Delhi after 60 years.