Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 August 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 17 August 2015

:: National ::

Modi’s ambitious Indradhanush project missed

The seven-pronged strategy announced by the government to improve the condition of India’s state-run banks has given some hopes of revival of these entities.
Rating agency Crisil, in a note, said that the focus on efficiently using the capital, rather than merely growing the business size, is a paradigm shift, but cautioned that the programme’s success will depend upon its ‘relentless implementation’.
The government package, coined as ‘Indradhanush’ touches upon several incremental reform measures such as the creation of a Bank Board Bureau (BBB), linking the compensation of banks' top management to performance, improving governance standards, focussing on quality of business rather than the quantity and fresh additional capital infusion within one month.
The government’s promise to set discoms right is encouraging, but one needs action on this front.
But where Indradhanush lacks an action plan is with respect to addressing the issue of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs).
Besides an economic slowdown, the NPA woes state-run banks currently face is due to large-scale directed lending to high-risk sectors, the banks' inability to recover money from large, politically connected wilful defaulters and due to the absence of a strong bankruptcy law.
The government should act on these three points if banks’ NPA problems need to be addressed effectively:
One, banks need autonomy to operate. Unless the government ceases to be the single largest stake holder in these entities, this autonomy will remain only on paper.
The fact remains that the responsibility of financial inclusion (through various social security schemes) and risky lending rests with the public banks, while private sector banks largely play safe.
Second, a well-thought-out plan to recover the existing bad loans from large wilful defaulters is key to resolve the menace of NPAs in the banking sector.
An action plan for this was missing in the Indradhanush document. If the government is determined to bring down the bad loans of banks it owns, it should go strongly after large wilful defaulters and get the money back. The inability of banks to recover money for wilful defaulters, within the current structure of laws and processes, is quite apparent.
Third, a strong bankruptcy law, like in the west, is necessary for banks to deal with crisis-ridden companies and promoters. Presently, there are no strong laws that enable banks recover money from wilful defaulters.
In most such cases, the defaulters seek legal recourse to delay the process of loan recovery. For instance, in Kingfisher case, eventhough Kolkata-based United Bank of India had tagged Kingfisher as a wilful defaulter, the company got a favourable order from the court on technical grounds. Banks haven’t made any progress thereafter in this case.

:: International ::

Pakistan spy master tied to militants, dies

Hamid Gul, who led Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency as it funneled U.S. and Saudi cash and weapons to Afghan jihadis fighting against the Soviets and later publicly supported Islamic militants, died late Saturday of a brain hemorrhage. He was 78.
Gul’s tenure at the ISI and his outspoken backing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other extremists highlighted the murky loyalties at play years later when the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath tested the U.S.-Pakistani alliance.
Gul came to be seen as an increasingly out-of-touch braggart later in life, as he appeared on countless Pakistani television programs warning of conspiracies and demanding his country militarily confront India.

:: Business ::

RIL dethrone by IOC

Within two quarters of losing its 23-year-old reign as the country’s most profitable company to TCS in the December quarter, Reliance Industries was again humbled in the June quarter, this time by IndianOil.
The state-run firm booked Rs.118 crore more profit than the Mukesh Ambani-run firm net income of Rs.6,318 crore.
Better refining margins arising from lower oil prices and almost full payback of subsidies by the government helped the nation’s biggest oil company Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) to report a massive more than twofold jump in the June quarter net profit at Rs.6,436 crore.
IOC’s refining margins soared to a seven-year high during the reporting quarter. For Reliance, losing the numero uno slot comes within two quarter as in the December 2014 earnings season as well it had lost out to TCS as it booked more profit than RIL with a net income of Rs.5,328 crore.
The loss in the December 2014 quarter was the end of RIL’s 23-year run as the most profitable firm with a net profit in the country, overtaking the long-standing champion Reliance which saw its profit dip to Rs.5,256 crore as falling crude prices hurt its core business.

:: India & world ::

India, Bangladesh both facing fake currency problem

The Indian team informed the Bangladeshi side that fake notes were being used by some “state agencies” to fund terror activities in India and that forensic examination of the seized notes indicated that they were being printed using raw materials and sophisticated currency printing machines available only for sovereign states.
Indian agencies have strong reasons to believe that the high-quality fake notes being pushed into the country were being printed in Pakistan.
The Bangladeshi agencies also gave a presentation on the adverse impact of fake notes on the country’s economy. In Bangladesh, such notes are being used to fund human and drug trafficking, besides anti-state activities.

Digital record

The Bangladeshi delegation accepted a proposal from the Indian side to help establish state-of-the-art facilities for examination of fake currency notes and maintain a digital record of seizures and analysis. The Indian team proposed to create a database on smugglers for use by both countries.

:: Miscellaneous ::

National consumer court issues notice to Nestle

The national consumer court on Monday issued notice to Nestle India over the central government's Rs 640-crore unfair trade practice class action suit related to tainted samples of the popular Maggi two-minute noodles.
A bench of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission comprising Justice VK Jain and BC Gupta directed Nestle India to respond to the notice by September 30 and allowed the government to send samples of Maggi noodles to an accredited laboratory for tests on lead content and MSG.
The Centre had last Tuesday filed a first-of-its-kind “class action” complaint against Nestle India, seeking Rs 640 crore in damages for alleged unfair trade practices by selling “hazardous” Maggi noodles to millions of consumers, especially children.
The complaint – filed through the secretary of the consumer affairs department in the national consumer court – accused Nestle India, a subsidiary of Nestle SA, Switzerland, of promoting noodles containing excessive lead as healthy with the sole aim of enhancing profits.

:: Sports ::

Super Saina leads India's rise in badminton

For a country which produces world-class athletes miserly, something revolutionary is happening in the world of badminton with world No.2 Saina Nehwal leading the Indian charge.
There is a steep jump in the number of Indians competing at the highest level of the sport in the last few years, with currently three men and two women in the top 15 of the respective world rankings.
India had players like Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand, current national chief coach, in the past but they were exceptions at best.
Padukone won India's first World Championships medal, a bronze, way back in 1983 after winning the prestigious All England Championships in 1980, whereas Gopichand won the All England title in 2001.
Padukone even rose to the pinnacle of the sport when he was ranked No. 1 in the world badminton rankings in 1980.