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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 July 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 17 July 2015

Amid the delay in release of caste data collected by the states under the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), 2011, the Cabinet on Thursday approved setting up of an expert group headed by Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya to classify the data and publicise it.
However, no time line has been set for release of the data on caste/tribe as most of the states are yet to submit their report to the Centre on clubbing of various sub-groups of castes.
States have yet to complete the consolidation of 46 lakh castes,sub- castes,sub-caste names, synonyms, surnames, clan and gothra names enumerated by the census.
Other members of the Panagariya committee would be nominated by the ministries of social justice & empowerment and tribal affairs.
The Centre’s move comes after opposition parties demanded release of the caste data immediately.
The government has already released the socio-economic data generated by SECC on rural areas on July 3. It showed that almost 75% of households earn less than R5,000 per month; nearly 60% of them are deprived in some way or the other; 56% are landless and close to 36% of the rural people are illiterate even 68 years after independence.

Facebook has defended its Internet.org initiative as a "gateway" to provide low cost access to the internet after a government panel on net neutrality opposed it saying that the social networking giant was playing the role of a gatekeeper.
"Internet.org acts as a gateway, as opposed to a gatekeeper, to internet access by breaking down the cost, infrastructure and social barriers that exist today," Facebook vice president for Mobile and Global Access Policy Kevin Martin said in a statement.
The government panel discussed Facebook's Internet.org while preparing the report and found that it provided free access for only a few websites until April 2015.
Net neutrality implies that equal treatment be accorded to all internet traffic and no priority be given to an entity or company based on payment to content or service providers such as telecom companies, which is seen as discriminatory.
The neutrality debate gained momentum in India after telecom operator Airtel launched a platform, Airtel Zero, that would allow free access of some websites on it network. The companies were asked to pay Airtel for joining the platform.
Internet.org, on the other hand, is a Facebook-led initiative which aims to bring 5 billion people online in partnership with tech giants like Samsung and Qualcomm as well as mobile operators.

In a move that will attract more overseas inflows and improve the ease of doing business in India, the government on Thursday simplified foreign investment rules by bringing together different categories.
The Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, introduced a composite cap for all kinds of overseas inflows, including foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign portfolio investment (FPI) and investments by non-resident Indians (NRIs).
The decision, which was first announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget, boosted stocks of banks, which will now find it easier to attract foreign capital up to 74%. Banks are already reeling under the pressure of rising bad loans and need billions of dollars to meet capital requirements.
Besides banks, credit information firms, commodity and power exchanges, and defence and other retail companies among others, will also benefit from the policy.

The policy will allow any sort of foreign investment up to 49% without government nod, i.e., through the automatic route. However, investments that are subject to government approval will continue to come under the Centre’s purview. The same will apply to sectors which allow 49% FDI. In case of companies seeking to rejig their portfolio of investors within the 49% cap, it can be done through the automatic route, except in banking and defence, where the FPI limit has been capped at 49% and 24%, respectively, subject to government nod.

In a bid to strengthen credit flow to small and marginal farmers, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks to ensure that direct lending to such farmers does not fall below the average of the last three years for the whole banking system.
The central bank will publish this average number at the start of every year, it said in a notification. This is in addition to the changes in priority sector lending norms that the RBI made in April this year. These changes in norms come in the wake of the Centre’s concerns over an uncertain monsoon and its impact on small and marginal farmers, the RBI said.
The RBI had widened the scope of PSL by bringing in loans to medium enterprises, social infrastructure and renewable energy under the ambit and removing the bifurcation of direct and indirect lending to agriculture.
The central bank also raised the target for direct lending to small and marginal farmers under the norms to 7% for 2015-16 and to 8% for 2016-17. In its Thursday notification, the RBI added that banks should also continue to maintain all efforts to reach the level of 13.5% direct lending to the beneficiaries who earlier constituted the direct agriculture sector.

A new drug may treat malaria in a single dose and prevent infection being transmitted by mosquito bites to other people, scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have found.
The compound is the first to cripple a critical protein that the malaria parasite needs to survive at different stages of its complex life cycle, and is suitable for clinical tests in humans, researchers said.If human trials underway are successful, the compound - known by its acronym DSM265 - could give doctors a new tool to prevent and treat infection by the microscopic parasites that cause malaria, a mosquito-borne disease that kills more than 500,000 people annually.
An international team od scientists - spanning 20 institutions in three continents - pooled their collective expertise to accelerate the pace of discovery and validation.DSM265 targets a cellular protein made by the malaria parasite. Malaria parasites rely on this protein - known by its acronym DHODH - to express their genes and copy those genes when it's time to divide.
Since DHODH provides a critical function, this drug could impair the parasite at multiple stages of its life cycle, including one elusive stage when it hides in the human host's liver, researchers said.

Former Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar was appointed as the Chief Advisor of Security and anti corruption unit (ACSU) of BCCI for next year’s T20 World Cup to be hosted by India.
Kumar was already roped in by the BCCI for a one-year period in the anti-corruption unit during the IPL.
Amrit Mathur has been appointed as the Principal Coordinator while R P Shah will be the Tournament Manager, Finance.