February 24, 2010
ü Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Tuesday said Islamabad would welcome a third-party mediating role for China to help bridge its differences with India.
· Would India like it?
· It is to be noted that China claims a part of Kashmir as its own – Aksai Chin
· The Pakistan Foreign Minister has also stated that they would like the talks to be broad based and should not be restricted to terrorism alone.
· But India has ruled out third country mediation and has maintained that terrorism would be the focus of the talks to be held in Delhi later this month.
ü The government needs an unequivocal statement from Maoists stating that they will abjure violence if it has to consider their offer of talks, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said on Tuesday.
ü The government last week quietly secured Cabinet approval for a new agreement with the United States that aims, inter alia, at promoting the privatization of agricultural extension services and facilitating collaborations between American agribusiness and the Indian farm sector.
· Agricultural extension was once known as the application of scientific research and new knowledge to agricultural practices through farmer education.
· The field of extension now encompasses a wider range of communication and learning activities organised for rural people by professionals from different disciplines, including agriculture, agricultural marketing, health, and business studies.
· The proposed Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. on ‘Agriculture Cooperation and Food Security’ was approved on Thursday and is likely to be signed this or early next month.
· It is also intended to give a push to private investment in agriculture for growth of agribusinesses and farm-market linkages with stress on creating an enabling environment for private investment and reciprocal trade.
· It includes bilateral policy dialogue and agribusiness-to-business collaboration between India and the U.S.
· The nutrition security component calls for bilateral cooperation and best practices, including access to adequate quantities and quality of “diverse diet and diversified and fortified foods” and an integrated programme that targets the most vulnerable.
· The food security aspect focuses on sharing technological expertise and promotion of private sector extension in agriculture.
· Collaboration in S and T and education would focus on technology to farmers and agribusinesses.
· The weather forecasting for crop management and market information part of the pact highlights improvement of crop production management in response to vagaries of weather and potential impact of climate change variability.
· While India could gain from improved weather forecast technology in the proposed MoU, the bilateral collaboration on S&T, food and nutrition security will give access to the U.S. to India’s great genetic diversity of crop plants for commercialisation in its interest.
· The opening of food security policy dialogue is also a matter of concern as it will impose on India the U.S. model of agribusinesses and vertical integration of food chain, impacting diversity and consolidating monopolies.
· The costs of implementing the MoU would be borne by “parties that incur them.”
· Joint Working Groups would be set up to implement each component.
· property issues would be settled as per the S&T agreement with the U.S., which was also approved in the last Cabinet meeting.
· An India-U.S. Agriculture Knowledge Initiative is already in place that allows for U.S.-based private multi-national trading and seed giants like Cargill and Monsanto to be appointed on the board, enabling them to bear influence on the country’s farm research.
· The present MoU was initiated under the India-U.S. Agriculture Dialogue during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington last November.
ü The Election Commission on Monday informed the Supreme Court that wearing a burqa by a Muslim woman was a mere religious custom, and not an integral part of Islam.
· The Commission said: “Article 25 of the Constitution does not confer unfettered rights to religious practice, but merely protects the essential or integral practice of any religion.”
· The SLP was directed against the September 7, 2006 judgment of the Madras High Court, dismissing a petition filed by M. Ajmal Khan against the use of photographs in the rolls.
· The Commission, in its affidavit, said: “To maintain the sanctity of democratic process, it is necessary to prevent fraud of voter identity, and the photo electoral rolls will greatly help in identification of electors and prevention of bogus enrolment.”
ü With the Andhra Pradesh government asserting that Maoists had infiltrated the Osmania University campus as students, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the State to produce reported intelligence inputs to support the claim.
ü Raising anti-Taliban slogans, Sikhs in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday blocked roads for hours and burnt tyres during a bandh to protest the recent killing of two members of the community in Pakistan’s restive tribal belt, and demanded concrete steps to ensure the safety of minorities in that country.
ü India believes that Pakistan’s bid to hoist the water issue on the bilateral agenda would be misplaced because the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) has stood the test of time in resolving differences.
· IWT Commissioners have met over a 100 times since the treaty was signed half a century ago to exchange information and iron out irritants, which means that the mechanism has been working well.
· In fact, Islamabad’s desire to bring the water issue on the table on the eve of this week’s foreign secretary talks is a change from its stand in 2002, when the “Pakistan Water Sector Strategy” argued for thwarting any “attempt by India” to scrap the treaty. It anticipated an adverse impact on the river water flows if the treaty was scrapped and argued for building storage capacities to meet requirements in times of shortages, which Pakistan has failed to do adequately.
· Under the IWT, Pakistan has the right to utilise the upper three “western” rivers — Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — and India has the right to use the water of three “eastern” rivers — Ravi, Sutlej and Beas — as it thinks fit.
· Under the treaty, India is allowed to store 3.6 million acreage feet (MAF) of water of the western rivers, but it has not built any such facility so far, allowing unimpeded flows into Pakistan.
· Since the water level in the Chenab varies wildly during winter and summer, a better strategy would be for both countries to build a joint storage project which would serve the farmers of both countries during the lean periods.
· Pakistan’s water woes are compounded by silting at the Tarbela and Mangla dams, with an internal official assessment admitting that it has lost 32 per cent of its storage capacity due to the problem.
· Pakistan has a large surplus of unused water. Its documents show about 30 MAF as “available surplus” with a very high escapage to the sea.
· As a result of the IWT, Pakistan was assisted by India financially (£62.06 million) and by the IBRD fund to build replacement works, including link canals for transferring waters of the western rivers to eastern rivers.
ü The official record of the public hearing on the Vedanta Aluminium’s plan to expand its refinery in the foothills of Orissa’s Niyamgiri Hills seems to contradict itself. While the people said “no” to the project, the officials recording their statements concluded with a “yes”.
ü In one of the biggest recalls recorded in the Indian automobile industry, leading car marker Maruti Suzuki India on Tuesday announced that it had recalled nearly one lakh ‘A-Star' cars, the company's flagship export model, to replace a faulty fuel pump gasket.
· The replacement will be done at no cost to the customers and will help check possible fuel leak.
· Maruti Suzuki had in 2008 replaced speedometers in its popular Maruti 800 and Omni models.
· The model was launched on November 19, 2008, and the 998 cc K10B petrol engine car is produced only in India at its Manesar facility.
· Last month, Japanese auto major Honda had recalled 8,532 units of its sedan Honda City in India due to defective power window switch as part of a global recall initiative.
· A-Star is now exported to about 70 countries and is sold as Suzuki Alto in Europe, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
· Besides, some of the other major markets are Chile, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and the UAE, where it is sold as Suzuki Celerio.
· Japanese car major Nissan also sells A-Star in the European market under a contract manufacturing agreement with MSI's parent Suzuki. Nissan sells the model as Pixo.
· The company is expecting to double its export this fiscal on the back of robust demand from A-Star, as against 70,023 units in 2008-09.
ü The Greece Crisis(Simplified : Source CNN)
· What is the problem? Years of unrestrained spending, cheap lending and failure to implement financial reforms left Greece badly exposed when the global economic downturn struck. This whisked away a curtain of partly fiddled statistics to reveal debt levels and deficits that exceeded limits set by the euro zone.
· What is the debt limit in Euro? It is 3% of its GDP.
· How big are Greece’ debts? National debt, put at €300 billion ($413.6 billion), is bigger than the country's economy, with some estimates predicting it will reach 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2010. The country's deficit -- how much more it spends than it takes in -- is 12.7 percent.
· So, what happens now? Greece's credit rating -- the assessment of its ability to repay its debts -- has been downgraded to the lowest in the eurozone, meaning it will likely be viewed as a financial black hole by foreign investors. This leaves the country struggling to pay its bills as interest rates on existing debts rise. The Greek government of Prime Minister George Papandreou, which inherited much of the financial burden when it took office late last year, has already scrapped most of its pre-election promises and must implement harsh and unpopular spending cuts.
· What will happen to the other Euro countries? Greece is already in major breach of eurozone rules on deficit management and with the financial markets betting the country will default on its debts, this reflects badly on the credibility of the euro. There are also fears that financial doubts will infect other nations at the low end of Europe's economic scale, with Portugal and the Republic of Ireland coming under scrutiny. If Europe needs to resort to rescue packages involving bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, this would further damage the euro's reputation and could lead to a substantial fall against other key currencies.
· What is Greece doing to revive its economy? The government has started slashing away at spending and has implemented austerity measures aimed at reducing the deficit by more than €10 billion ($13.7 billion). It has hiked taxes on fuel, tobacco and alcohol, raised the retirement age by two years, imposed public sector pay cuts and applied tough new tax evasion regulations.
· Are the people happy? Predictably, quite the opposite and there have been warnings of resistance from various sectors of society. Farmers have begun blockading roads to demand greater government subsidies, while on February 10, workers nationwide staged a one-day strike closing airports, government offices, courts and schools. More strikes are expected to follow.
· Can’t the other countries help? With the reputation of the region's single currency on the line, powerful euro zone partners are keen to see Greece's problems resolved, but analysts say European Union and European Central Bank rules are unclear and seem to rule out bloc-wide rescue packages. This leaves it up to member nations -- all of which are saddled by their own debt problems -- to cobble together their own bailout plans. There are reports that the euro zone’s dominant economy, Germany, is leading calls for a "firewall" to prevent Greece's crisis from spreading, but as yet no concrete proposals have been made public.
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