Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 05 April 2014

NCAER survey on piped water connection

Not all of the Indian middle class has access to all amenities yet. According to latest data from National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER), only 40 per cent of those in the middle class, comprising households with annual income above Rs. 88,800 annually (an estimate suggested by NCAER researchers), have piped water connections, and only 15 per cent get three hours of water supply every day. Just over half of such families have flush toilets and a similar percentage get 18 hours of electricity in a day.
Non-agricultural labour is still the most common job for men in families earning between Rs. 88,801 to 1.5 lakh per year. For the richest 20 per cent population (above Rs. 1.5 lakh per year), however, salaried work becomes the most common occupation.
By standard international definitions, like a consumption expenditure of more than $10 per day, India would have no middle class because everyone spending that much is in the top 5 per cent population of the country. The NCAER data shows that just 12 per cent of adult men in 2011-12 had a degree or diploma, only 8 per cent could speak fluent English and 14 per cent had some computer skills. Women had fewer skills than men in each of these categories.

The total grid-connected solar capacity, commissioned under the National Solar Mission, crossed the 2,500-MW mark and stood at 2,632 MW as on March 31, 2014. Of the total, a little over a third of capacity was commissioned in Gujarat.
A total capacity of 947 MW was commissioned during fiscal 2013-14 and Madhya Pradesh added highest capacity of 310 MW during the year, according to a document of Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).
Of the commissioned, higher contribution came from state-policy driven projects at 1,322 MW, followed by MNRE projects at 688 MW, REC Scheme at 491 MW and the rest came from RPO (renewable purchase obligation), private sector rooftop and central government organisations.
Gujarat (916 MW) topped the cumulative capacity table, followed by Rajasthan (730 MW), Madhya Pradesh (347 MW) and Maharashtra (249 MW), among others.

Russia and Ukraine appear to be heading towards another gas price war that may further inflame the East-West standoff over the former Soviet state.
Ukraine’s Acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said his government did not accept the price of $485 per 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas that Russia set this week for Ukraine after scrapping earlier discounts.
Russia’s state gas monopoly Gazprom, acting with full approval from the government, has made it clear it will not back off. Gazprom said Ukraine had violated the terms for getting a $100 discount because it had run up a debt of $2.2 billion for gas deliveries.
Following Crimea’s reunification with Russia last month, Gazprom cancelled another $100 gas discount it granted to Ukraine under a 2010 agreement on extending the Russian lease of a naval base in Crimea’s Sevastopol from 2017 to 2042.
The gas price dispute is fraught with a third "gas war" between Russia and Ukraine. In 2006 and 2009 Europe was left freezing in winter when Kiev syphoned Europe-bound Russian gas after Russia cut deliveries to Ukraine.
Russia supplies 30 percent of Europe’s gas and almost half of it, or more than 70 billion cubic metres, is piped through Ukraine.

Pakistan Interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said that the government plans to release 12 or 13 Taliban prisoners soon, some of them in the list given by the Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan(TTP) and some others as well.
The government has already released 19 non-combatants in March and more will follow. The TTP had non combatants and innocent people in their captivity, for instance the sons of the late Punjab governor Salman Taseer and former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, and they too should be released along with some foreigners and government servants.
The number of those released should go upto 30 or so by the time peace talks progress. He reiterated the TTP had to respond to the government's gesture and it wont work one way. It was easy to conduct a military operation against the militants but negotiating peace was more difficult.

On a roll in the ongoing ICC World Twenty20 where his team has entered the finals, Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni has another reason to smile as he has won the 2014 Asian award for outstanding achievement in sports in U.K.
In 2013, Dhoni became the first captain to win all the three ICC trophies. Dhoni was ranked 16th on the Forbes list of highest paid athletes.

Thailand’s United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), or Red Shirts, started a three—day mass rally in support of the caretaker government.
Several thousand supporters gathered at the rally site on Utthayan Road on the outskirts of capital Bangkok. UDD leaders had earlier predicted that up to 500,000 people nationwide would join the rally.
The rally was called soon after the Constitutional Court March 20 annulled the Feb 2 general elections.
Moreover, as demanded by the CAPO, commander of the First Army Division Apirat Kongsompong has ordered the deployment of 300 soldiers to help maintain security during the rally.