March 9, 2010

March 9, 2010

Ø       Women’s Bill - The Union government on Monday tabled the Women's Reservation Bill for consideration and passage, but failed in its floor strategy to even initiate a discussion in the face of continuous disruptions by a handful of members.

·         The 108th Constitution Amendment Bill (Women's Reservation Bill) provides for 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and the Legislative Assemblies.

·         The Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal withdrew support to the government.

·         Both the above mentioned parties wanted to have reservations for backward communities within the quota for women.

·         But what is the real bone of contention?

o    The advocates of the bill say that the bill is essential for active participation of women in politics,

o    The opponents of the bill say that only women from the elitist sections of the society will benefit from the bill.

·         The proposed legislation to reserve 33.3 percent seats in Parliament and state legislatures for women was drafted first by the H D Deve Gowda-led United Front government and was first introduced on September 12, 1996.

·         What does the bill provide?

o    Reservation for women at each level of legislative decision-making, starting with the Lok Sabha, down to state and local legislatures.

o    In continuation of the existing provisions already mandating reservations for scheduled caste and scheduled tribes, one-third of such SC and ST candidates must be women.

·         It has to be noted that 33.3 percent reservation for women exists in Panchayati bodies and more than a million women have benefited from such a move.

·         The opponents of the bill argue that along with such a bill, an adequate representation to women of other marginalised sections has to be provided.

·         It has to be noted that 22.5 percent of the Lok Sabha seats are reserved for SC/ST candidates.

·         India is placed 99^th amongst the world nations when representation of women in the legislative bodies is considered.

o    India has just 59 women members out of 545 MPs in Lok Sabha and 21 women members out of 233 MPs in Rajya Sabha.

o    India is way behind its neighbours Pakistan, Bangladesh and China in the above mentioned ranking.

Ø       The Oscars - The 82^nd Academy Awards were presented with “The Hurt Locker” winning 6 awards including the awards for the Best Picture and Best Director.

·         Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the academy award for the Best Director for the movie “ The Hurt Locker”

·         The magnum opus “Avatar” won 3 awards.

·         It has to be mentioned that it was the first time after 1943 that 10 movies were competing for the best motion picture. Casablanca had won the award in 1943.

·         The hosts for the ceremony were Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

·         For a list of the winners, click here.

·         For a brief history of the Oscars, click here.

Ø       Indo- Sri Lanka - India plans to set up a Consul-General's office in Jaffna to help the people of the peninsula and fully restore connectivity to south India.

·         While Sri Lanka has three consulates in India — in Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata — India has only one, in Kandy.

·         The basic objective is to cater to the needs of the people of the Jaffna peninsula.

·         It would help India strengthen the cultural links between the Northern Province in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu besides making it easier for the people to obtain visa to travel to India.

Ø       Air India created history on Monday by handing over the cockpit of 22 domestic and international flights, including a direct one from Mumbai to New York, to women on International Women's Day.

Ø       The Secretary-General of the Supreme Court has challenged the Delhi High Court judgment that the office of the Chief Justice of India is a “public authority” that comes within the ambit of the Right to Information Act and is bound to provide information about declaration of asset details by Supreme Court judges.

·         The appeal, filed on Monday by advocate Devadatt Kamat, said the impugned judgment “has far-reaching consequences for the institutional independence of the Supreme Court”.

·         On September 2, 2009, a single judge dismissed an appeal by the Chief Public Information Officer against an order of the Central Information Commission asking the Supreme Court Registry to furnish to RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal information in CJI's possession on judges' assets.

Ø       Birth Gender Disparity highest in East Asia

·         Birth gender disparity is the greatest in East Asia, where 119 boys are born for every 100 girls.

·         China and India together account for more than 85 million of the nearly 100 million “missing'' women estimated to have died from discriminatory treatment in health care, nutrition access or pure neglect – or because they were never born in the first place.

·         One-tenth of women in the region report being assaulted by their partners, and a majority of women who do work – up to 85 per cent of South Asia's working women – are engaged in unstable low-end work in the informal economy.

·         The region is far behind where it could be on basic issues, such as protecting women from violence, upholding entitlements to property – even allowing people to divorce in an informed and reasonable way.

·         Nearly half of the countries in South Asia, and more than 60 per cent of those in the Pacific, have no laws against domestic violence.

·         All these are statistics revealed by United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) on Women’s day.

Ø       In an interesting development, the Chinese Health Minister has said that the pharmaceutical companies from India and other developing countries are welcome in China.

·         Improving market access for Indian pharmaceutical companies was among the issues Minister of Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma raised with his Chinese counterpart Chen Deming in trade talks in January.

·         Companies say they have routinely faced market access issues, and point to what they describe as long-drawn-out procedures for getting their drugs registered as another barrier to entry.

Ø       A strong, pre-dawn earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6 on Richter Scale struck eastern Turkey on Monday, killing 51 people as it knocked down stone and mud-brick houses and minarets in at least six villages, said the government.

Ø       In a significant development, Israel and Palestine have agreed for indirect talks across the border.

·         The United States has begun discussing the structure and scope of indirect talks between Israel and Palestine, according to George Mitchell, U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.

Ø       State Bank of India (Amendment) Bill, 2010 - A Bill, seeking to reduce Centre's shareholding in State Bank of India (SBI) from 55 per cent now to 51 per cent and to allow the bank to raise more capital from the market through preference shares, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday.

·         Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee moved the State Bank of India (Amendment) Bill, 2010, amidst slogan shouting by SP, RJD and BSP members against the Women's Reservation Bill in its present form.

·         The Bill's statement of objects and reasons said the legislation was aimed at allowing “reduction of shareholding of the Central Government from 55 per cent to 51 per cent consisting of the equity shares of the issued capital.”

·         It said the SBI Act, 1955, was amended in 1993 to enable the bank to access the capital market.

·          The Bill also aims to provide for flexibility in the management of the bank.

·         It will provide for increasing the authorised capital of the SBI to Rs.5,000 crore and enable the Central Government to increase or reduce the authorised capital in consultation with the Reserve Bank of India.

·          The Bill will allow SBI to raise issued capital by preferential allotment of share or private placement or public issue or rights issue in accordance with procedure, apart from bonus shares to existing equity shareholders through Central Government direction.

·         With the amendment, SBI would comply with the Basel Capital Accord, the current international framework on capital adequacy adopted in 1988 and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's new framework, called Basel-II, under which public sector banks are required to increase their capital base to meet the minimum requirements.

·         What is authorized capital?

o    The authorized capital of a company (sometimes referred to as the authorized share capital or the nominal capital.

·         What is issued capital?

o    The issued share capital of a company is the total nominal value of the shares of a company which have been issued to shareholders and which remain outstanding.

o    Issued capital is always less than or equal to authorized capital.

Ø       L&T Power Development Company, a subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro (L&T), plans to set up coal-based power projects worth 5,000 MW by 2015.

Ø       India has emerged as one of the world's top ten countries in industrial production, according to UNIDO's (United Nations Industrial Development Organisation) ‘Yearbook of Industrial Statistics 2010'.

·         In 2009, India overtook Canada, Brazil and Mexico and moved up to the ninth position, three places up from the 12th position it held in 2008.

·         The top ten in 2009 were: the U.S., China, Japan, Germany, the Republic of Korea, France, Italy, the U.K., India and Brazil.

·         As per the yearbook, the sectors in which India figures among the global top ten are textiles; leather, leather products and footwear; coke, refined petroleum products, nuclear fuel; chemicals and chemical products; basic metals; electrical machinery and apparatus; and other transport equipment, other than motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers.

·         Despite the global financial crisis, India maintained its industrial growth and overtook its major competitors in the developing world as a consequence.

·         Alongside, however, the country's manufacturing value added (MVA) per capita at $283 is still way below that of Brazil ($631) and Mexico ($1,093).

·         However, despite China's lead in the absolute amount of production, the report suggests that Japan is still the most industrialized country globally in terms of MVA per capita.

·         MVA is the value added (output value-input value) in the manufacturing sector of an economy.