11 June 2010

NATION & POLITICS

Indian Art Attains Glory

A PAINTING by Syed Haider Raza sold at Christie's for £2.4 million (Rs 16.42 crore) , making it a record for any modern or contemporary Indian work of art. Saurashtra, a 7-foothigh, richly-coloured abstract dating from 1983, had been expected to sell for £1.3-1.8 million.

This comes after a collection of 152 works by one of the country’s priciest modern artists, FN Souza, on Wednesday night fetched £5.4 million with fees, exceeding a presale upper forecast of £2.3 million, based on hammer prices.

The work, with his famous bindu, embodied a growing and strong India. Now, he has taken India and its art to greater heights: the bindu symbolising the growing importance of Indian art.

US pressured Rajiv, implies Digvijay

CONGRESS general secretary Digvijay Singh painted an oversized bulls-eye on his party’s back for the Opposition to target when he said that “American pressure” could have prompted the then government at the Centre to offer safe passage to Union Carbide’s Warren Anderson.

Mr Singh’s statement, virtually indicting the then Rajiv Gandhi government in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, could not have come a more inopportune time for Congress, which is finding it difficult to explain the response of its governments in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh to the world’s worst industrial disaster.

He said that state government headed by Arjun Singh cannot be blamed for letting off Mr Anderson. The state government hardly had any role to play in this case. The case was being investigated by CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation); the compensation was decided by the judiciary. Warren Anderson going away could have been under American pressure. All decisions regarding the Bhopal gas leak were taken by the central government and that the state government was only following its orders.

There was a Cabinet Committee in the Government of India which took all decisions regarding this case. The only task the government of Madhya Pradesh was to get the decisions implemented.

Digvijay Singh’s defence of the state government came in response to the claims made by then district collector Moti Singh that he had instructions from the chief secretary to let Anderson leave Bhopal on December 7, 1984, three days after the gas leak.

NAC focus: Food security, tribals

Tribal development will be one of the top priorities of the reconstituted National Advisory Council (NAC) along with focus on disadvantaged groups. The group held its first meeting on Thursday with Sonia Gandhi back as chairperson.

The issue of food security and natural resource management, land rights and land reforms, right to health and right to education, urban poverty, rural regeneration, the northeast and the plight of internally displaced people came up at the meeting.

The members of NAC pointed out that the issue of tribal rights and development had to be located in a larger context than just the Naxalism issue.and it needs to be addressed as they were a ‘disadvantaged group’ and not because Naxalism was dominant in central tribal belts.

Former Goa minister Mickky Pacheco in hot water

FORMER Goa tourism minister Mickky Pacheco has been charged with culpable homicide, not amounting to murder, abetting suicide and destruction of evidence in the Nadia Torredo death case. Nadia, a ‘close friend’ of Mickky, died on May 30 — 15 days after ‘mistakenly’ consuming large quantities of rat poison for toothpaste.

INTERNATIONAL

Iran says new curbs fit to be thrown into ‘dustbin’

A defiant Iran described new UN sanctions as a “used handkerchief that should be thrown into the waste bin” and said it would continue uranium enrichment that world powers suspect may be aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

In Vienna, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Ali Asghar Soltanieh dismissed Wednesday’s UN vote as another dark chapter of mistakes and miscalculations and said he hoped the major powers would reconsider their “mistakes”.

A US-drafted sanctions resolution was adopted by 12 votes to two in the UN Security Council on Wednesday, with Lebanon abstaining and Brazil and Turkey voting against.

Although swiftly hailed by the US, Britain and France who cosponsored the resolution, the sanctions drew an immediate, scornful reaction from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

4 million Pakistanis under Taliban rule: Amnesty

Amnesty International has said millions of people in the lawless region live in a “human rights-free zone” without legal protection and are subjected to abuses by the Taliban.

“Nearly four million people are currently living under the Taliban in northwest Pakistan without rule of law and are effectively abandoned by the Pakistani government,” Amnesty’s interim secretary-general Claudio Cordone said.

In a report titled “As if Hell Fell on Me: The Human Rights Crisis in Northwest Pakistan”, the London-based rights organization asked the Pakistan government and Taliban to comply with international humanitarian law. According to Amnesty, at least 1,300 civilians were killed in the fighting in northwest Pakistan in 2009.

Taliban rain death in Af-Pak

A suicide bomb ripped through a wedding party for a family with ties to police in the Taliban’s heartland in Afghanistan, killing at least 40 people and wounding dozens more.

Economy, Banking & Finance

Centre keen on nodal vendor for mobile companies

THE Centre has mooted a proposal to set up a company that will be owned by all telecom operators and will be responsible for managing, maintaining and building communication networks for them. All international equipment suppliers—Nokia Siemens, Ericsson, Huawei, and Alcatel Lucent, among others—will execute contracts for all service providers through this company, if this proposal becomes reality, a department of telecom (DoT) .

The proposal is based on the premise that getting telcos and gear makers to operate within such a set-up will address security concerns arising out of foreign, especially Chinese, telecom equipment companies building and managing telecom networks in the country.

At present, he networks of India’s largest firms—Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications (RCOM), Vodafone, Tata Tele and Idea—are being managed by international equipment suppliers such as Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Huawei or Alcatel-Lucent. RCOM has outsourced its GSM network management to China’s Huawei while Loop Telecom has tied up with another Chinese firm, ZTE, for its GSM rollout across India.

BPOs eye rural market, new biz models to outdo rivals

FOR INDIA’S over $15-billion BPO industry, the next big shifts include hiring more resources in the markets they serve, moving away from traditional voice-based low margin business and leveraging the rural market for creating another delivery layer that could further reduce costs. India is already losing around 70% of all incremental voice, call centre business to newer rivals such as Philippines.

at the BPO Strategy Summit 2010, hosted by software lobby Nasscom, was how best Indian outsourcing service providers can innovate to improve customer engagement, take advantage of the changing business landscape and expand geographically.

Nod for mid-term appraisal of XIth Plan

The mid-term appraisal (MTA) of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007-12), which scaled down the average growth target of the economy to 8.1% from 9%, has been approved. The MTA will now be placed before the National Development Council (NDC), the highest policy making body in the country headed by the Prime Minister. The commission had lowered the growth rate for the current plan to 8.1% from 9% in the wake of the global financial crisis that slowed the rate of economic expansion. The commission had projected in the MTA that the economy would expand by 8.5% in the current fiscal.

Pulses, milk push up inflation to 16.74%

FOOD price inflation rose for the second week running due to a rise in the prices of essential commodities such as fruit, pulses and milk, defying the government’s efforts to tame runaway food prices.

An index tracking wholesale food prices climbed to 16.74% for the week ended May 29 compared with 16.55% in the previous week. The unabated increase in the prices of essential items is expected to force the Reserve Bank of India to tighten the liquidity in the system in the first quarter review of monetary policy on July 27.

In April, the wholesale pricebased inflation stood at 9.59%, slightly lower than the March number. The RBI has pegged the wholesale price-based inflation at 5.5% by the end of this fiscal.

Cotton acreage shrinks in TN, rises in Karnataka

Tamil Nadu has seen a drop in cotton actreage this season in the backdrop of an expectation that the area under the crop would rise across India. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh account for over 7% of the national output. Cotton acreage (according to Cotton Advisory Board data) in Tamil Nadu stood at 1.09 lakh hectares in 2008-09 but slipped to 1.04 lakh hectares in 2009-10 and is pegged at 95,000 hectares in 2010-11.

In Karnataka, estimates indicate there would be around 25-30% of acreage diversion from maize and potato to cotton, notably in Hassan district.

Govt raises support price for pulses to perk up production

To promote pulses production, centre has raised their minimum support price by between 14 and 30 per cent even as it effectively pegged the support price for paddy at the same level as last year. THE government on Thursday raised the minimum support price of paddy by Rs 50 per quintal to Rs 1000 per quintal in what may push up its food subsidy bill, pegged at Rs 5 5,578.18 crore in the current fiscal.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, presided by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, went beyond the recommendations of the Committee for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) in raising the MSP for pulses, particularly for arhar (tur).The CACP had recommended an MSP of Rs 2,800 a quintal for arhar against Rs 2,300 last year. But, the Government decided to fix it higher at Rs 3,000, an increase of roughly 30 per cent. The MSP for moong has been raised by nearly 15 per cent to Rs 3,170 and that of urad of the same order to Rs 2,900.

The Agriculture Ministry has estimated the production of pulses at 14.77 million tonnes against 14.57 million tonnes. In addition, at least four million tonnes have been imported. Hike in support price would lead to higher acreage under pulses and thus improve availability in the coming season. The government procured 33 million tonne rice last year.India’s total rice production is around 98 million tonne. Pulses were a major contributor to the inflation with prices rising 31 per cent, contributing significantly to the overall annual food inflation that touched16.74 per cent for the week ended May 28.  With regard to pulses, India holds a unique record of being the largest producer, importer and consumer in the world.

In addition, an incentive of Rs 5 a kg for tur, urad and moong will be given if they are sold to the procurement agencies during the harvest/arrival period of two months.

The Union Cabinet also approved the extension of cotton seed’s validity as an essential commodity beyond the initial period of six months by another six months from June 22, 2010, onwards.

Banks need okay to deal with politically exposed people

THE Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said banks should obtain senior management approval to continue business relationship with an existing customer who has subsequently become a politically exposed person and that banks should conduct customer due diligence (CDD) on politically exposed people (PEP). The central bank has also said banks should apply enhanced CDD to customers who are close relatives of PEPs, and accounts of which a PEP is the ultimate beneficial owner.

Banks have to conduct proper know your customer (KYC) to avoid being used for money laundering and financing of terrorism. In the past, banks had been asked to follow risk management procedures on continuous basis for PEP accounts.

RBI has defined politically exposed persons as those individuals who are, or have been, entrusted with prominent public functions in a foreign country such as heads of states or of governments, senior politicians, senior government or judicial or military officers, senior executives of state-owned corporations or important political party officials. RBI had advised banks to gather information on any person of this category desiring to do business with the bank and check all the information available on theperson in the public domain.

The Nationalisation and after

JULY 19, 1969, was an important day in the history of Indian banking. 14 major Indian scheduled commercial banks in the private sector, each having deposits of Rs 50 crore or over, were nationalised on that day.

The main objectives were ‘to control the heights of the economy and to meet progressively, and serve better, the needs of development of the economy in conformity with national policy and objectives’. The immediate tasks set for the nationalised banks were mobilisation of deposits on a massive scale and lending of funds for all productive activities, irrespective of the size and social status of the borrower, particularly to those in the weak sectors of the economy.

On April 15, 1980, six more private sector banks with total deposits of not less than Rs 200 crore each were nationalised, extending further the area of public control over the country’s banking system.

almost 25 years later, in 1994, with the governments all over liberalising their economies partly on account of pressure from multilateral agencies which funded their growth plans, policy makers again opened up to the private sector and gave licences to set up nine new private banks. They also allowed the nationalised banks to offer equity shares to the public, thus shedding its pure nationalised state. Subsequently, some new private banks merged with others and two other new banks have come up too. Now the government is considering giving licences for more private banks.

Japan’s economy grows 5% in Q1

Japan’s economy grew more than initially estimated in the first quarter, data showed, with exports keeping a recovery on track as signs emerged that domestic demand is strengthening.

A fourth straight quarter of expansion saw gross domestic product in the January-March period grow at an annualised 5%, beating last month’s estimate of 4.9% and expectations of 4%.

SPORTS

The World’s Most Watched Sporting Event Kicks Off Today

Most awaited event of the year 2010 i.e. FIFAWorld Cup 2010 is going to start today. The FIFA will have a wonderful opening ceremony of the FIFA World Cup 2010 which is being hosted first time by the South Africa or any African nation.

South Africa is ready to host this great event and making history by hosting this mega event of the Soccer world / Football world. The Football is one of the most played and watched game of the world with more than 200 nations playing the Football.

In India ESPN has the right to telecast the World cup matches 2010 while on internet one can watch most of the Football world cup matches at ESPN360.com.  32 teams are participating in the world cup 2010 which has qualified among the to 32. The World Cup 2010 of Football will conclude on the 11th of July 2010.

To see its schedule list, visit FIFA 2010

Verma ineligible to fight for BAI top post: Azhar

Mohammad Azharuddin fired a salvo at Badminton Association of India (BAI) president VK Verma, saying the BAI chief is not eligible for re-election. Azhar referred to the sports ministry guidelines which fix the terms of a national sports federation president to 12 years and said it’s time to go for Verma, having been at BAI’s helm for as many years.

Ganguly to lead Lara for MCC against Pakistan

Sourav Ganguly will captain Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in a side featuring cricket great Brian Lara when they face the touring Pakistanis in a T20 fixture at Lord’s on June 27. The match will be the first time that MCC, which owns Lord’s, has played a T20 fixture. Among those also confirmed to play for MCC are Sri Lanka left-arm pace bowler Chaminda Vaas and Australian One-day specialist Ian Harvey. It will also be the first time Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi.

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