Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 05 August 2013

Indian junior girls hockey team win BRONZE

• Historic win:Jubilant Indian Junior women hockey team members celebrate after winning the bronze medal at Junior World Cup (Women) in Monchengladbach, Germany
• India beat England 3-2 via penalty shootout after the regulation time of 70 minutes ended at 1-1.— In fact, this is the maiden success for the Indian women’s hockey team, across age groups, at the world level.
• Their best before this was a fourth place finish, at the 1974 World Cup and the 1980 Olympics.

Rouhani to form govt in IRAN

• In the midst of parliamentarians, senior clerics, top officials and an array of foreign dignitaries, Hassan Rouhani sworn in as Iran’s new President..
• A moderate cleric backed by the former President Mohammad Khatami and the reformists, Mr. Rouhani has emerged as a unifying figure — his comprehensive victory in the June elections amid high turnout being widely interpreted as an event that brought closure to the divisive and fractious 2009 presidential elections.
• For the first time, Iran has invited foreign guests for a presidential inaugural, signalling Tehran’s extrovert approach during the Rouhani presidency.
• Russia-China conduct military drill
• Russia and China flagged off their regular anti-terrorist war games in Russia’s Urals region seen by experts as preparations for a local military conflict in Central Asia.
• The “Peace Mission 2013” drill in the Chebarkul military training area 1,700 km east of Moscow involves 1,500 troops and more than 250 units of military hardware, including 20 aircraft and helicopters.
• China has dispatched over 600 personnel as well as tanks, armoured personnel carriers, reconnaissance vehicles, self-propelled guns, JH-7A fighter-bombers and helicopters to participate in the drill, which will continue till August 17.
• Joint military exercises held since 2005 alternatively in Russia and China within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are invariably described as anti-terrorist, but in reality go far beyond their official agenda.
• Though the scenario of the drills in Chebarkul typically provides for the destruction of large terrorist gangs, the weapons and equipment involved suggest “preparations for a full-scale local war on land”, said analyst Vasily Kashin of the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

Measure on tobacco control a uphill task

• The Supreme Court has once again ensured that public health overrides commercial interests. The court’s intervention a few days ago brought to an end an eight-year delay in vacating the Bombay
• High Court’s stay in implementing point of sale rules on tobacco and tobacco products. Though the High Court has to still adjudicate the case, the manner in which the apex court faulted it for “passing the impugned orders” leaves no doubt that the 2004 statute, as amended in 2005, will not be struck down.
• Coming down heavily on the government’s lackadaisical attitude, a clearly enraged Supreme Court bench noted that the manner in which the government handled the matter in the High Court was “quite intriguing.”
• The only difference is that the products advertised consist of harmful material rolled in paper or packed in sachets and sold as cigarettes and pan masala . Together, they kill one million people every year in India.
• The rules allow only 60 cm by 45 cm boards without colour, brand names, logos, promotional messages, pictures or special illuminations to be used.
• The board shall only list the type of tobacco products available, and a sizeable portion at the top would carry a health warning to put off new customers and inform and dissuade existing users. The government should, therefore, follow the WHO’s recommendation by banning product display and “keeping tobacco out of public view.” It will result in fewer youths taking to smoking and also “reduce impulse purchases among adults wanting to quit.”

Understanding the poverty line

• A Committee chaired by one of India’s finest economists, former Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council and the National Statistical Commission, the late Suresh Tendulkar, computed poverty lines for 2004-05 at a level that was equivalent, in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, to one U.S. dollar per person per day, which was the internationally accepted poverty line at that time.
  Tendulkar line

• PPP refers to a method used to work out the money that would be needed to purchase the same goods and services in two places.
• Across countries, this is used to calculate an implicit foreign exchange rate, the PPP rate, at which a given amount of money has the same purchasing power in different countries.
• The 2004-05 Tendulkar poverty line was Rs.16, which in PPP terms, is equivalent to one U.S. dollar per person per day.
• The new poverty estimates of Rs. 29 per person per day recently released by the Planning Commission are equivalent, in PPP terms, to the new internationally accepted poverty line of $1.25.

• The suggestion that somehow this much money is enough for people to survive in any conceivable form has given rise to understandable public anger, much exacerbated by insensitive suggestions by some members of the ruling party that even less could be enough.

• All that the Planning Commission has done is to use the most credible source of consumption data available in the country (the National Sample Survey Organisation) to compute poverty estimates that are both on parity with international standards and enable comparisons within India over time and across States.

• There is no value judgment being made about the adequacy of this amount of money for any meaningful purpose. All that is being done is to provide an estimate (using the very same methodology) that allows one to compare the number of people below a certain consumption level (aka poverty line) in 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2011-12. Nothing more, nothing less.

• The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) conducted by the Government of India, in partnership with all State Governments, is nearing completion.

• The SECC data will be presented in gram and ward sabhas across the country over the next few months and this will enable a kind of social audit of this data and foster citizen awareness and participation in the process.

• The SECC contains invaluable information on homelessness, manual scavenging, disability and a host of other deprivations, all of which are major constituents of poverty.

• These will be used to identify the people entitled to specific benefits. Thus, the homeless will be the beneficiaries of IAY and the disabled will get disability pensions, irrespective of whether or not they have a BPL card. The food security legislation will cover 67 per cent Indians, which is more than three times the number of people living below the consumption poverty line (22 per cent).

Sources: Various News Papers