Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 05 January 2015

:: National ::

NITI Aayog will set policy agenda: Modi

• On the first day of the New Year, the Modi Government set up NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) in place of the Planning Commission. The Prime Minister will head the new institution tasked with the role of formulating policies and direction for the Government.

• Its Governing Council will comprise State Chief Ministers and Lt. Governors of Union Territories. The Prime Minister will appoint the Aayog’s Vice-Chairperson and CEO. Asian Development Bank’s Former Chief Economist Arvind Panagariya is tipped to be the first Vice Chairperson.

• The Government plans to adopt a ‘Bharatiya’ approach to development, states the resolution of the Union Cabinet for setting up the Aayog. India needs an administration paradigm in which the government is an enabler rather than a provider of first and last resort, it states.

• The Aayog will recommend a national agenda, including strategic and technical advice on elements of policy and economic matters. It will also develop mechanisms for village-level plans and aggregate these progressively at higher levels of government.

• The institutions of governance and policy have to adapt to new challenges and must be built on the founding principles of the Constitution, the resolution states. On the planning process, it states that there was a need to separate the process from the strategy of governance.

• Transforming India, it further states, would involve changes of two types — consequences of market forces and those that would be planned. “The maturing of our institutions and polity also entails a diminished role for centralised planning, which itself needs to be redefined.”

• A state-of-the-art Resource Centre for good governance practices is also proposed. The original Planning Commission was set up in March, 1950 through a Cabinet Resolution, which the Modi Government scrapped in August 2014.

India can be a beacon to the world says Mohan Bhagwat

• The world is turning to India for a new path of peaceful co-existence in these difficult times and we have a responsibility to guide the world, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat said here on Sunday.

• “Due to the decline of religions, the world is facing a crisis. Everything from theism to atheism and science has been tried. But the problems remain. Thinkers worldwide are saying that a new path is needed.

• They are turning to India,” Mr. Bhagwat said in his address to thousands of RSS workers on the concluding day of the organisation’s three-day conclave. “This country, with its non-imperialist past and steeped in tradition, can give a lesson in peace and happiness to the world. Those born in India have a responsibility to be a beacon to the world. It is important that we lead our lives in such a way as to set an example.”

• “History has shown us that when India was a world leader, there was peace and progress. There was no harm to the environment or the social fabric of society. We have to build that Bharat again and the responsibility lies with the Hindu ‘samaj’[society],” he said.

• The fate of the nation was linked to the fate of the Hindu society and religion. “It is our responsibility to mobilise the Hindu society, to strengthen our tradition and inspire people to serve the country.”

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:: Business & Economy ::

India to see good growth in future: experts

• India’s growth prospects and the chances that it will pick up pace against China formed a point of discussion at a three-day conference on ‘Management Challenges in Uncertain Environment’ began at the Indian Institute of Management-Kozhikode (IIM-K).

• The conference is organised jointly by Association of Indian Management Scholars (AIMS) International and the IIMK. Around 150 delegates from India as well as from abroad are participating in the programme.

• In his inaugural address, C. Balagopal, founder of Terumo Penpol, the largest blood bag manufacturing facility in the world, highlighted that ‘uncertainty’ was the keyword of the moment when industries and businesses across the world were facing challenges in appropriate decision makings.

• He expressed hope that there would soon be clarity from where the demand for products and services was going to come from. Looking at the Indian conditions, there was already the growth of power generation, highways, ports, and the rest of the infrastructure that were needed to sustain high growth.

• He stressed that China was the best example of this phenomenon, and India would soon be there too. As China slowed, Indian growth would pick up, and sustain the demand for commodities including steel, building materials, capital equipment, and consumer products.

• In his keynote address, Prof. Kulbhushan Balooni, Director, IIM-K underlined the dire need of scholarly research in the field of business and management by Indian institutions, and highlighted the research initiatives and programmes that were carried out by the IIM-K.

• He then shared with the delegates an analysis of ‘Management knowledge development scenario in India’.

• He underscored the point that, knowledge creation was a point of recognition among the peers, and its benchmarking was done by the number of citations by peers of a research article.

Need to clean up bad debts in banks within a year says RBI Governor

• Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, made a strong case for cleaning up bad debts of banks and restructure other possible non-performing assets (NPAs) within a year to put the economy back on track.

• He also favoured channelising ‘full savings’ of the households into the financial system so that the requisite resources for growth were made available.

• “In the short-term (up to 12 months), there is need to clean up the NPAs and then restructure other stressed loans so as to put the economy back on the track,” Dr. Rajan said at the two-day Gyan Sangam.

• Total gross NPAs of public sector banks stood at over Rs.2.43 lakh crore as on September 30, 2014. The top 30 NPAs accounted for Rs.87,368 crore or 35.9 per cent of total gross NPAs of PSBs.

• Dr. Rajan said the bona fide mistakes made by the bankers while taking commercial decisions should be protected by the government.

• “If the officers are hauled up for such decisions, this would to lead to delay in good decisions because of avoidance of risk,” he said.

• The Governor also stated that there was a need for internationalisation of the banking system in the current global environment.

• “The capital base of the banks may need to be enhanced,” Dr. Rajan said while emphasising on the need for consolidation in ownership, improvement in governance, and enhancement of management capability.

• With the licensing of the small banks and the payments banks, there would be new players in the industry and competition among the PSBs will also grow to meet these challenges. “Accordingly, PSBs have to develop differentiated products,” Dr. Rajan said.

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:: Science & Technology ::

‘Big Bang’ to be probed using Antarctica telescopes

• A set of six telescopes collectively known as Spider — Sub-orbital Polarimeter for Inflation, Dust and the Epoch of Re-ionization — will circle Antarctica in a bid to observe a haze of faint, radio microwaves that envelops space.

• Such waves are thought to be the fading remnants of the primordial fireball in which it all started 13.8 billion years ago and the exercise would help scientists understand the phenomenon of the Big Bang, the most plausible theory explaining the origin of universe.

• The telescopes are designed to detect faint curlicues (a decorative curl or design of an object) in microwaves.

• Spider will observe the microwaves in two wavelengths that would allow them to distinguish dust from primordial space-time ripples, said William Jones from the Princeton University in the U.S. Mr. Jones is also the leader of the Spider experiment.

• The theory propounds that such curls would have been caused by violent disruptions of the space-time continuum when the universe began expanding.

• Spider is the sister experiment to a California Institute of Technology-based project known as Bicep, whose investigators made headlines last spring when they announced that they had recorded curlicues in a patch of the sky from a telescope at the South Pole.

The Indian Science Congress lauds ‘feats’ of ancient India

• The Indian Science Congress made history on Sunday with a symposium on “Ancient Sciences through Sanskrit” that included a paper on the existence of interplanetary aircraft in India around 9,000 years ago, references to “cosmic connection” and a phenomenon explained as “fusion of science and spirituality due to inter-penetration law.”

• Held under the aegis of Mumbai University, this is the first time in its 102-year history that the Congress has included such a session, a move hailed by delegates as long overdue but criticised by many as mixing of science with mythology.

• Seven papers were presented over the five-hour session. Papers were invited by the Department of Sanskrit, Mumbai University, and Kavi Kulaguru Kalidas University, Ramtek, and reviewed by the Mumbai University’s Department of Sanskrit. Some authors were professionals from varied fields, while others were students of Sanskrit.

• One paper, co-authored by Captain Anand Bodas, retired head of a pilot training centre, and Ameya Jadhav, a teacher, claimed there was evidence of ancient aviation in the Rigveda.

• Captain Bodas told his audience that knowledge of making aeroplanes existed between 6 and 7000 BC. An ancient Indian sage, he said, had also talked of a radar system, which depended on the “basic principle that any animate or inanimate object radiates energy all the time. We know that when radiation stops, that object is considered dead.”

• Other papers spoke about how Indian texts were the first to talk about the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, a constant known as pi, the Pythagoras theorem, classification of plants, veterinary science and metallurgy.

• “In the Sulbha Sutra written in 800 BCE, Baudhayan wrote the geometric formula now famously known as Pythagoras theorem. It was written by Baudhayan 300 years before Pythagoras,” said Gauri Mahulikar, Head of the Sanskrit department of Mumbai University. She added that Sulbha Sutra was also the first to crack the pi ratio.

• Union Minister of State Prakash Javadekar said it was high time India used its ancient knowledge and wisdom. Even Germany was showing “pragmatic interest” in Sanskrit, he said at the inauguration of the symposium.

Study will find out if Aspirin could tackle ‘dementia’

• An Australian university has been commissioned by the US-based National Institutes of Health to investigate aspirin’s anti-dementia powers, local media reported.
• Dementia, where a person’s cognitive mind, function and memory dissolves, is one of the biggest medical challenges for elderly people.
• Monash University in Melbourne has begun a 50 million Australian dollar ($41 million) trial called ASPirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly (ASPREE), Xinhua reported.
• It is a joint study with the Berman Centre for Outcomes and Clinical Research in Minneapolis in the U.S. and involves more than 19,000 Australian patients in the trial.
• Aspirin’s properties revolve around its ability to stop blood platelets clumping together, reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
• But its active ingredient is salicin, which has an anti-inflammatory effect and is derived from willow trees.

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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