Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 04 August 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 04 August 2015

:: National ::

Govt on backfoot over land acquisition bill

A joint parliamentary committee has favoured restoring most of the provisions of the UPA's 2013 land law into the land acquisition bill the Centre wants to pass, signalling a climb-down by the government.
Sources said that even the BJP members on the 30-member panel had favoured scrapping the exemptions that the NDA's current bill provided from the social impact assessment (SIA) and consent provisions.
They said the panel, headed by BJP member S.S. Ahulwalia, had discussed the amendments suggested by each party and made the following recommendations
Switch back to "private company" in the clause stipulating the consent of 80 per cent landowners for acquisition for private projects. The bill, which mirrors the currently enforced ordinance, had replaced "private company" with "private entity" to make room for NGOs, corporations, proprietorships, etc.
Make the SIA mandatory for all projects except for acquisition under the urgency clause (mainly national security projects), as provided under the 2013 law. The current bill exempts national security projects, rural electrification and housing, industrial corridors and public-private-partnership (PPP) infrastructure projects.
Revoke the exemption given to industrial corridor and PPP projects from the (70 per cent) consent provision.
The panel will discuss the bill's provision to extend the deadline for return of unutilised land to any length of time specified in the project proposal. The 2013 law limits the period to five years.
The committee is expected to hand in its report on August 7. Its new bill will be placed before Parliament.
The Centre had been saying that the 2013 law was stalling development projects by making land acquisition extremely tough, and that several states had sought amendments to it.

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:: International ::

World glaciers melting faster than ever

The intense ice loss of the past two decades has resulted in a strong imbalance of glaciers in many regions of the world, says an alarming study, indicating that glaciers will suffer further ice loss even if the climate remains stable.
"The observed glaciers currently lose between half a metre and one metre of its ice thickness every year. This is two to three times more than the corresponding average of the 20th century," Exact measurements of this ice loss are reported from a few hundred glaciers only.
According to the team, the current rate of glacier melt is without precedence at global scale, at least for the time period observed and probably also for recorded history.
In addition, the study shows that the long-term retreat of glacier tongues is a global phenomenon.
Glacier tongues in Norway have retreated by some kms from its maximum extents in the 19th century.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service has compiled worldwide data on glacier changes for more than 120 years.
In this study, observations of the first decade of the 21st century (2001-2010) were compared to all available earlier data as well as to reconstructions from pictorial and written sources.

UN sets 2030 as goal to end poverty and hunger

The 193 member states of the United Nations have reached an agreement on a new development agenda for the next 15 years that calls for eradicating povertyand hunger, achieving gender equality, improving living standards and taking urgent action to combat climate change.
The draft agreement reached on Sunday evening outlines 17 goals with 169 specific targets on issues ranging from ending poverty "in all its forms everywhere" to ensuring quality education and affordable and reliable energy, and protecting the environment. "We can be the first generation that ends global poverty, and the last generation to prevent the worst impacts of global warming before it is too late," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday.
The document called "Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" will be adopted at a UN summit just before the annual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly in late September.
The 17 new, non-binding goals will succeed the eight Millennium Development Goals adopted by world leaders 15 years ago. In his final report last month on the Millennium Development Goals, Ban said the effort has helped lift more than one billion people out of extreme poverty over the last 15 years, enabled more girls to go to school than ever before, and brought unprecedented results in fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS.
Despite significant progress on all the MDGs, the only original goal that was achieved ahead of time was cutting in half the number of people living in extreme poverty, and that was due primarily to economic growth in China.
Ban stressed inequality remains, with 80% of the people living on less than $1.25 a day located in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and 60% in just five countries, India, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh and Congo.
Agreement on the new goals is the culmination of more than three years of intense and complex negotiations.

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:: Business ::

NBFCs prefer raising funds through debt route

Credit off take by non-banking finance companies from the banking system registered a rise of only 1.6 per cent on a year-on-year basis in June 2015, as compared to a rise of as much as 16.7 per cent in the same period in the previous year, according to a statement from the Reserve Bank of India.
The outstanding credit as on June 26, 2015, stood at Rs. 3,11,800 crore against Rs, 3,06,900 crore as on June 27, 2014.
Sequentially also, the growth was less compared to 5.6 per cent in the previous month. Analysts say NBFCs prefer to raise money through debt route rather than relying on banks as the cost of raising funds through debt route is cheaper.
There was, of course, a modest rise in personal loans by 16.5 per cent in June 2015 as compared to 15.2 per cent a year ago.
Non-food credit growth of scheduled commercial banks registered a year-on-year growth of 7.7 per cent in June 2015, against 13 per cent in June 2014.