Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 13 April 2016

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 13 April 2016

:: NATIONAL ::

Meteorological department predicts rainfall close to 106 percent of normal

• In line with recent predictions by private weather forecasters, India’s official weather forecasting agency too has said the monsoon is likely to be “above normal” and likely to be 106 per cent of the average of 89 cm.

• Monsoon rains within 96 per cent and 104 per cent of this average are considered “normal” in the terminology of the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

• “The monsoon will be fairly well distributed but southeast India will get slightly less rain.

• IMD also said some regions would see floods and that the chances of drought — defined as a deficit of 10 per cent or more — were only one per cent this year.

• In any given year, the chances of such a drought are 16 per cent.

• Several reasons underlie the IMD’s optimism. Most importantly, it hinges on a waning El Nino — a global, meteorological phenomenon that’s associated with a warming of the waters of Central Pacific and correlated with droughts in India.

• The historical observation that 7 out of 10 years, in the last century, that followed an El Nino saw normal or above normal monsoon rains in India.

• The years 2014 and 2015 were among the strongest El Nino years in meteorological history and were blamed for the climatically rare event of successive drought years.

• Though Pacific temperatures haven’t cooled enough, “El Nino neutral conditions” are expected to set in between June and July.

• Another meteorological phenomenon known as a positive Indian Ocean Dipole — where the western portions of the Indian Ocean are warmer than the east and thereby push rain-bearing clouds over India — is also likely to form during the middle of the monsoon season, according to the IMD.

• Finally, a La Nina — or an anti-El Nino — and associated with heavy rains in India was expected to set in around September, too late for the Indian monsoon, but its onset is generally considered enabling for the rains.

India and US have agreed on a logistic support agreement

• In a significant decision that could have far-reaching implications for India’s military posture, India and the U.S. have agreed “in principle” on a logistics support agreement.

• It was first proposed in 2004 and resisted by the UPA government for a decade — that would make it easier for both militaries to share each other’s facilities.

• The Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) was the highlight of U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter’s three-day visit to India.

• It ended with a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Besides LEMOA, Mr. Carter and his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar announced initiatives to strengthen the growing strategic partnership.

• Denying that LEMOA would facilitate basing of U.S. troops in India, Mr. Carter said: “It makes it more routine and automatic for us to operate together.”

• The three “foundational agreements” guide the U.S. high technology cooperation with other countries.

• Besides LEMOA (traditionally called the Logistics Support Agreement), the others are Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA) and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement for Geo-spatial Cooperation (BECA).

Sixty plus sex ratio tilt in favour of women

• India has more elderly women than men with the sex ratio of the country’s 60-plus population recorded at 1,033 women per 1,000 men in the 2011 Census, up from 1,029 in the 2001 census.

• The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation has put out these figures in the latest National Sample Survey report on ‘Health in India’, which notes that the share of 60-plus women is higher than that of men in both rural and urban areas.

• Experts describe the pattern as feminisation of ageing, which in the context of a developing country like India, brings with it health and financial concerns.

• According to the Health in India report, around 70 per cent elderly women in both urban and rural India are economically dependent on others. And around 35 per cent of women aged over 80 are immobile.

• The sex ratio in the country had shot up from 930 in the 1991 Census to 1,029 in 2001. However, the National Sample Survey in 2004 recorded a drop in this ratio to 999, before it went up again in 2011.

• Among rural areas, the highest sex ratio (1,289) was reported in Gujarat and in urban Assam it was recorded as 1,476.

• The overall proportion of the elderly in India, home to the world’s largest youth population, too has gone up. An estimated 87.6 million aged people live in India, about 69 per cent of them in rural parts.

• In 1981, the share of the elderly population per 1,000 in rural India was 68, which went up to 88 in 2011. In urban India, the elderly share was recorded at 54 per 1,000 in 1981, going up to 81 in the 2011 Census.

• But about 50 per cent of the elderly population is totally economically dependent on others.

• Financial constraints are further compounded by illnesses of old age. The survey found a high proportion of the elderly battling chronic illnesses and around 8% of the elderly, particularly those aged over 80, confined to their beds.

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:: INTERNATIONAL ::

Brazil’s first woman President facing impeachment

• Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff entered the straight Tuesday of a desperate battle to save her presidency ahead of an impeachment vote in Congress this weekend.

• In a ruthless and complex contest, supporters and opponents of Brazil’s first woman President raced to amass the votes that will either send her to trial in the Senate or torpedo the procedure.

• The speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, was expected to present the formal impeachment document to the chamber.

• Deputies were then due to start debating on Friday with a vote pencilled in for Sunday.

• In the committee, a simple majority was enough to push the case along, but the full house requires a two-thirds majority, or 342 deputies, to send Ms. Rousseff’s case to the Senate.

• Anything less and Ms. Rousseff — accused of fiddling accounts to mask the dire state of the government budget during her 2014 re-election — will walk out with her job.

• The latest survey of the 513 deputies in the lower house by Estadao daily on Monday showed 299 favouring impeachment and 123 opposed.

• Ms. Rousseff and allies, led by ex-president LuizInacio Lula da Silva, have fought back hard in the last few days, describing the impeachment drive as a coup plot in disguise.

Canada will offer apology for Komagata maru

• Almost 102 years after Canada turned away more than 376 migrants, mostly Sikhs from India, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will formally apologise on May 18 for the incident that happened due to “discriminatory laws of the time”.

• Speaking at the Baisakhi celebration in Ottawa on Monday, Mr. Trudeau said that the Komagata Maru’s passengers were seeking refuge and better lives, “like millions of immigrants to Canada since”.

• “With so much to contribute to their new home, they chose Canada. And we failed them utterly,” the Prime Minister said

• In May 1914, Komagata Maru, a Japanese steamship that was carrying 376 immigrants, mostly Sikhs, from India, was denied entry by the Canadian government and forced to return.

• Two months later, itarrived in Calcutta where British soldiers fired upon the disembarking passengers, leading to 19 deaths.

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:: Business and Economy ::

Consumer price index fell to 4.83

• Consumer price inflation slowed to 4.83 per cent in March, the lowest reading in six months, government data showed.

• The decrease in consumer price index was mainly due to the marginal easing of prices across most sectors, the most significant of which were the ‘food & beverages’ and ‘fuel & light’ segments.

• India’s industrial output as measured by the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) snapped a three-month losing streak to clock 2 per cent growth in February, the data revealed.

• The IIP moved to positive territory due to strong growth in infrastructure and consumer durables sectors.

• But experts said the industrial output numbers do not reflect sustainable recovery and the inflation trend could reverse in coming months.

• The IIP data assumes significance coming on the back of other indicators—such as the Index of Eight Core Industries and the Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index—also showing a pick-up in manufacturing activity.

• The Reserve Bank of India recently cut interest rates by 25 basis points to spur demand in the economy.

• The capital goods segment of the IIP continued to shrink in February for the fourth month in a row, declining 9.8 per cent. Similarly, output from the consumer non-durables sector dipped 4.2 per cent.

• The manufacturing segment of the IIP returned to growth in February recording 0.73 per cent, following three months of contraction.

• As has been the case over the past nine months, urban consumption growth has picked up and resulted in increased production of consumer durables.

• Electricity production, as measured in the IIP, grew by 9.6 per cent in February compared to 6.7 per cent in January.

Arvind Subramanian says India’s trade policy is ambivalent

• There is ambivalence in India’s trade policy and this is partly due to the disruption and dislocation that trade is causing across the world, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian said.

• “We have had lot of reforms, the barriers have come down significantly, our trade has expanded, but when it comes to trade policy, there is a kind of genuine ambivalence on how rapidly India needs to open up domestically and to engage internationally whether it is the WTO or the TPP.

• This is a problem even in the U.S where presidential candidates are campaigning on anti-trade planks, he said.

• Carnegie senior associate Ashley J Tellis’s new paper ‘India as a leading power’ argues that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for India to become a leading power represents a change in how the political leadership conceives of India’s role in international politics.

• Mr Tellis’ key argument is that Mr Modi’s vision, when fulfilled, will mark the “third epoch in Indian foreign policy.”

• In the first, India survived the U.S-Soviet cold war hostility through non-alignment, which was “essentially defensive;” and in the second, starting from 1991, India pursued strategic partnerships with more than 30 countries and emerged as a ‘balancing power’ that can influence outcomes in international debates.

• “Modi seeks to transform India from being merely an influential entity into one whose weight and preferences are defining for international politics,” he said.

• “The currently tepid domestic economic liberalisation efforts” amounts to “forfeiting the possibilities of enhanced trade-driven growth,” and blames domestic politics and fears of foreign domination for India’s modest foreign trade, he said.

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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