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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 10 May 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 10 May 2015

:: National ::

Citizenship issue: Home Ministry unclear over guidelines

Since the NDA came to power in May last year, it has proactively followed the case filed in the Supreme Court by two NGOs urging that Hindus and other minorities from Bangladesh migrating to India to escape religious persecution, must not be bracketed with illegal migrants and sent back.
In the words of one of the lawyers involved, the government made emphatic assurances that it would resolve the matter.
Two initial hearings were handled by an Additional Solicitor-General, while Attorney-General Mukul Rohatgi appeared at the last hearing, held on April 7, and told the court that the matter was being considered by the Home Ministry and a decision would be communicated soon.
According to sources, the Home Ministry has had to consider several variables while formulating its response that will decide the fate of thousands of Bangladeshi Hindus living in 19 States. Because the period in question is since 1971, the first variable is the number of Hindu migrants that the case will cover.
Second, it has to fix timeframes — in order to argue that Hindus were persecuted in Bangladesh before coming to India, the Ministry has to cite specific events that took place in Bangladesh. That could complicate bilateral ties if the events mentioned happened to have occurred when the current ruling party in Bangladesh was in power.
The BJP has already declared that the immigration policy will be a major plank on which it will contest the Assam Assembly elections next year. “Some Hindus have come from Bangladesh owing to religious disturbances.
The BJP will give all of them citizenship once we come to power in Assam next year,” party president Amit Shah had said at a rally in Assam on April 27. He said his party would also work towards giving Indian citizenship to all Bangladeshi Hindu immigrants across the country. At the same time, echoing the campaign speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr. Shah said the BJP sought to get rid of illegal immigrants or “infiltrators” – read: Muslims who come over from Bangladesh.

Build "living contacts" to stem decline in Indology studies: Pranab

Faced with a declining interest in the study of “Indology” in Russia, President Pranab Mukherjee urged scholars to try and build “living contacts” with Indian universities and academics, and announced a new prize for Indology, instituted by the ICCR.
President Mukherjee met with a group of professors and indologists during his visit to Moscow, where he attended the 70th year commemoration of Russia’s World War two victory.
“It is a political reality that Russia and India have drifted apart as compared to the Soviet days, and as a result the interest in Indology has suffered,” Dr. Klara Dryukova, who teaches at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, tells, but adds that this year she has twenty-two students who have submitted diplomas on Indian studies on subjects as diverse as Indian history, the Kashmir conflict and SAARC relations, which is the highest number in a decade.
The President also responded to a scholar who called for Indian cooperation in strengthening the election process in Russia which they said is “often suspect”, ahead of Duma, or parliamentary elections in Russia in 2016.
The president said that the Indian parliamentary system is successful because the Election commission is “ferociously independent.” “We cherish it and we celebrate it," he added.
The scholars also spoke of the problems with making Indology studies relevant to a new generation of Russians.
Interestingly, the Indian film industry has also come to the rescue of Indology studies St Petersburg university professor Yulia Alikhanova, one of the few people in the group of Indologists in a younger age-group under 50, told. Professor Alikhanova says she has even incorporated the Mani Ratnam film “RaOne” and Bollywood hit “Hum Saath Saath Hain”, as a part of her course on the influences of the Ramayana text.
“While literature and language are more difficult to imbibe, crowds of students sign up, as they know more about Indian films, food, and Yoga.”
The study of Indology (history and politics of the Subcontinent) is considered to have been founded in Russia by Sanskrit scholar Ivan Minayev, who died in 1890. Over the years, the Indian government has helped fund programmes on Indology in Russia at the University of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. However, given lower numbers of students studying Hindi and other Indian languages in Russia, “the stream of Indologists” is shrinking, says State University for
Humanities professor Dr. Sergey Serebriany, who also attended the event, addressing his remarks in Bengali to a visibly pleased President Mukherjee. According to Dr. Serebriany, Indian authors who write in English like Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Kiran Desai, are now more popular amongst young Russians than older writings in vernacular languages.
Dr. Serebriany also told that there was a new rush in the country to learn Chinese instead. “It is easy to be impressed by China’s development in Russia. We (Russia and China) were both communist countries, and yet China has progressed so much faster economically.” However, Professor Tatyana Shaumyan, a reknowned indologist disagrees, saying that “Our interest in China is about pragmatism and economic practicality. The link with India is spiritual, and so is and will always be there.”

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:: International ::

Number of women in UK Parliament rises by a third

In another major change to Britain’s political landscape, the number of women in Parliament has risen by about a third.
About 29 per cent of MPs are women - up from 23 per cent before the May 7 election to the 650-member House of Commons, representing the largest increase since 1997.
The proportion of female Conservative and Labour MPs has increased, despite an overall fall in the number of Labour MPs.
The ruling Conservatives has 68 women MPs now compared to 47 in 2010. The Labour has 99 woman lawmakers compared to 87 last time.
But the biggest rise in female representation in the Commons came from the Scottish National Party, which now has 20 female MPs, up from just one.
All seven Liberal Democratic women who were MPs in the last Parliament have lost their jobs.
For many decades, female MPs made up less than five per cent of the total, the BBC reported.
This reached double digits for the first time under Margaret Thatcher in 1987, but shot up as a consequence of Labour’s 1997 landslide, when Tony Blair’s party increased its number of female MPs by 173 per cent.
Before the election, the regions of the UK with the highest proportions of female MPs were north-east England, London and north-west England.
Although there is no change to the top three so far, the SNP’s breakthrough manifests itself in a sharp rise in the proportion of female MPs in Scotland.
The east of England has also risen two places in the rankings - from bottom before the election, the report said.

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:: Business and Economy ::

BMW to add 10 more sales centres, to launch new models

German luxury carmaker BMW, which has been pushed to a distant No 3 in market share, will open 10 more outlets this year whereas it also plans to roll out 15 models, including four all-new models.
“We’ll take our brand foot prints to 50 this year from the present 40. Most of the new sales centres will come up in tier 2 cities like Vijayawada, etc,” BMW Group India president Philipp von Sahr told.
The company, which used to be the market leader in the luxury car space for many years in the country before its compatriot Audi stormed the market in 2008 and unseated it to a No 3, has matched its rival Mercedes’ numbers of 15 new launches this year.
Mercedes has toppled Audi in the first quarter of 2015 to be the No 1 with a massive 40 per cent rise in sales. While Mercedes-Benz sold 3,566 units during January-March, Audi sold 3,139 units during the period at a growth of 15 per cent.
“In 2015 we will expand our product range and cover all the opportunity available in the luxury car segment. We’ll be launching 15 models this year. Out of the 15 models, four will be brand new models, which will be imported from our global centres and the rest will be re-launches.
“We’ve already launched the concept car BMW i8, and the other brand new models are the X5M, the X6, and the X6M.
There will also be re-launches of the 1 Series and the 3 Series,” Sahr said.
The company kicked off its launches with the rollout of the over Rs 2 crore i8 in February and Sahr said the sports car which sports dual engines — a regenerative electric engine and a petrol one — is “sold out for the year”.
Currently BMW sells more than a dozen models out of which eight are manufactured locally at its Chennai plant, which has an installed capacity of 14,000 units per year at a three-shift schedule.
BMW India began operations in March 2007 and has since then invested Rs 490 crore.
It assembles 8 models locally at it two assembly lines here, which are the 1 Series, 3 Series, 3 Series Gran Turismo, 5 Series, 7 Series, X1, X3, and the X5.
When asked whether the company will be lowering the prices following a 75 percentage point increase in its local content sourcing, he answered in the negative, saying the objective of higher location is not price reduction but about participating in the ‘Make in India’ campaign.
Also, more than local sourcing what can help cut prices is the duty reductions on a major dip in either in the euro or in the rupee, he added.

:: Science and Technology ::

LCA Mark-I has limited capability: CAG

In critical observations pertaining to national security preparedness, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Mark-I Tejas being inducted into the Indian Air Force (IAF) has limited capability and does not meet the force’s operational requirements. In a second report, it pointed to the ammunition shortage in the Army’s war reserves. The two reports were tabled in Parliament.
The IAF had issued Air Staff Requirements (ASR) in 1985 for a light-weight multi-mission fighter aircraft to be inducted in 1994 to replace the MiG-21s in service. But LCA achieved initial operational clearance only by December 2013 and final operational clearance is expected only by 2018-end.
“LCA Mark-I does not meet the ASR. The deficiencies are now expected to be met in LCA Mark-II by December 2018,” the CAG said in the report.
The initial operational clearance version has “53 significant shortfalls” in meeting ASR, resulting in reduced survivability and operational employability, it observed.
The aircraft was developed by DRDO, and Aeronautical Development Agency had put the indigenous content at 70 per cent, but CAG said it “actually worked out to about 35 per cent” as of January this year as critical systems were imported.
This delay had forced the IAF to undertake “alternate temporary measures” such as upgradation of other aircraft and revise the phasing out of MiG-21s.
The project was sanctioned in 1983 at a cost of Rs. 560 crore, but has eventually ballooned to Rs.10,397 crore.
In the second report on ammunition management of the Army, the CAG pointed to the massive shortage in war wastage reserves of ammunition which is equivalent to 40 days of intense period.

:: Sports ::

Bopanna lifts Madrid Open trophy with Florin Mergea

Rohan Bopanna won his third title of the 2015 season and first with new partner Florin Mergea as they lifted the Madrid Open trophy with a tense win over Nenand Zimonjic and Martin Matkowski.
Bopanna and his Romanian partner saved a match point before overcoming the challenge of the fifth seeds 6-2 6-7(5) 11-9 in one hour and 24 minutes in the final of the clay court Masters event.
Bopanna had won two titles with Daniel Nestor in Sydney and Dubai at the start of the season before splitting with the Canadian.
With Mergea it was his second final, having ended runners-up at the Casablanca event, last month.
They split euro 247,560 prize money and earned valuable 1000 ranking points each.
Bopanna and Mergea raced to a 4-1 lead with an early break and never allowed their rivals to come back in the opening set. They kept the pressure on and earned three set points in the eighth game, converting the third to take first set in a matter of just 23 minutes.
Matkowski and Zimonjic put up fight in the second set as they broke Mergea in the third game. However Bopanna and Mergea prevented them from building on that early lead with an immediate break—back effort.
Bopanna too faced a break chance in the fifth game after hitting an ace on the second serve but held after firing another service winner.
In the sixth game, the Indo—Romanian pair was 0-40 but managed to earn a breakpoint even as they could not convert it.
Nevertheless, it put Zimonjic and Matkowski under pressure as they never got easy points. The set went with serve after that, forcing a tie—breaker.
Bopanna and Mergea sprinted to a 4-1 lead but lost four points in a row to trail 4-5. They saved a set point but Zimonjic and Matkowski succeeded in taking the match to a Super Tie Breaker.
The Match tie breaker turned to be a tense affair even as Bopanna and Mergea had opened up a comfortable 6-1 lead.
However, soon the score was 8-8. Bopanna and the Romanian saved a match point at 8-9 and reeled off the next three points to close the contest in their favour.