CURRENT AFFAIRS 12.04.2017

                                                             CURRENT AFFAIRS

Less than a month after taking over as Punjab Chief Minister, Amarinder Singh on Monday began his three-day visit to Mumbai and met top industrialists and corporate honchos and offered sops to woo prospective investors.
Under his ‘Invest Punjab’ initiative, Amarinder Singh met Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran, ICICI Bank CEO and Managing Director Chanda Kochhar, Goldman Sachs India Chairman Sonjoy Chatterjee and Godrej Group Chairman Adi Godrej.
Amarinder Singh also met KPMG India Chairman and CEO Arun K. Kumar.
Leading a delegation comprising ministers and officers, the Chief Minister promised to streamline systems and processes in Punjab to make it more investor- and industry- friendly.
He reiterated his commitment to provide power to industry at Rs 5 per unit.
Chandrasekaran agreed to visit Punjab to explore the possibility of setting up a major project.
Kochhar agreed to consider the possibility of shifting the ICICI Bank’s backend operations to SAS Nagar adjoining Chandigarh in the next stage of their expansion, a state government spokesman said.
The Chief Minister is expected to meet Reliance Industries Limited Chairman Mukesh Ambani and his brother Anil Ambani on Tuesday, apart from other leading industrialists and corporates.
The Congress government led by Amarinder Singh assumed office on March 16.
The new government faces serious challenges like huge debt of the state, unemployment, flight of industry and low investments


With oil prices firming up on strong demand and and increased uncertainty in Syria following the US bombings, crude prices are expected to touch $60 a barrel levels in the coming months an analyst said on Monday.
As per available data, the Indian basket, comprising of 73 per cent sour-grade Dubai and Oman crudes, and the balance in sweet-grade Brent, closed trade last Friday at $54.19 for a barrel of 159 litres.
“We expect crude to touch $60 a barrel in a few months, not few weeks,” oil analyst Virendra Chauhan told BTVi in an interview.
“May, June, July, the US summer demand will be strong and we expect the price to move into the sixties,” he said.
According to the latest data from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), its reference basket of 13 crude oils closed at $52.91 a barrel on Friday.
Chauhan discounted the impact of the Syrian crisis on oil prices.
“Fundamentally, there is not a lot of impact from Syria, which has been producing close to zero (oil) in the last 4 years,” he said.
“Where there is potential impact is if regional players get sucked into the unrest, like Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia,” he added.
Chauhan also said there is a limit to which increased US production could negate the effect of the cuts initiated by producers to tackle the supply glut and resultant falling prices.
“We expect the US rig count to grow, particularly in the Permian basin. The market, investors’ view on oil is that any cuts by OPEC, by non-OPEC… the gap will be filled by the US,” he said.
“Our view is that US production will not grow apace at a sustainable level to keep markets well supplied. Moreover, the impact that low prices have had on cutting back on investment in exploration infrastructure will take a long time to reverse,” he added.
Last November, major oil producers agreed to cut output as a response to the global supply glut that had been pushing down prices for nearly two years.
In early December, oil producers outside the OPEC, led by Russia, agreed to reduce output by 558,000 barrels per day (bpd). This came in the wake of the 13-nation OPEC cartel’s November 30 decision to cut output by 1.2 million bpd for six months effective from January 1.
This is the first time since 2001 that OPEC and some of its rivals had reached a deal to jointly reduce output to tackle the global oil glut.
Oil prices had earlier fallen by more than 50 per cent in less than two years, from levels of over $120 a barrel.


Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday said his country would begin exporting uranium to India “as soon as possible” as he held talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi here during which both sides also agreed to deepen cooperation in defence and security as well as in education.
“We’ve worked closely with India to meet our respective requirements for the provision of fuel for India’s civil nuclear programme, and we look forward to the first export of Australian uranium to India as soon as possible,” Turnbull said in his media statement after holding bilateral talks with Modi.
Modi, in his statement, said with the passing of legislation in the Australian Parliament with bipartisan support, Australia is “now ready to export uranium to India”.
The joint statement said India welcomed the passage of the Civil Nuclear Transfers to India Act by the Australian Parliament, which could ensure commercial exports of Australian uranium begins soon.
In September 2014, India and Australia signed a Civil Nuclear Agreement for Australian supply of uranium to India.
In December last year, Australian Parliament passed a law to allow the supply of uranium to India. The commercial deals for the supply of uranium are being further negotiated.
Turnbull also said his country was “pleased to be providing increasing quantities of high quality coal for steel making and increasingly for power generation with advanced super critical technology”.
The two sides signed six MoUs, including on cooperation in fighting international terrorism and on civil aviation security.
Addressing the media jointly with Turnbull after the talks, Modi said that cooperation in the fields of education and research was “one of the most important aspects” of India-Australia ties.
“Both India and Australia recognise the central value of education and innovation in the prosperity of our societies,” he said.
“It is no surprise, therefore, that cooperation in the field of education and research is one of the most important aspects of our engagement.”
Laying stress on students exchanges between the two countries, Modi said that while Australia was home to over 60,000 Indian students, an increasing number of Australian students was coming to study in India.
He also called for working closely with members of the East Asia Summit and the Indian Ocean rim countries to pursue common interests.
On his part, Turnbull said Australia was helping India in its water management policy while sharing expertise in the area of renewable energy.
Stating that trade in goods and services between the two sides stood at $20 billion, he said there was scope for increasing this.
“We are working with India for a quality RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership),” he said.
RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement between the 10 member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian nations (Asean) and the six countries with which Asean has free trade agreements — Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
On the Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement between India and Australia, Turnbull said they had “very good discussions”, and that both felt that “progress has not been as fast as either of us would like it to be”.
Both sides have asked their chief negotiators to schedule an early meeting to get the process moving.
“We will ask them to tabulate the areas of ambition where each side is seeking access so that we can see where and to what extent the parties, the negotiators are apart and they will report back to us as soon as possible so that we can keep the focus on delivering the CECA and identifying the areas where more work needs to be done,” Turnbull said.
In the meantime, both sides are working to identify tangible, commercial opportunities to strengthen two-way trade and investment and this would be a particular focus of his visit to Mumbai this week, he added.
The joint statement issued said the two were committed to deepening the bilateral defence and security partnership.
According to the statement, the two Prime Ministers also underscored the joint commitment of Australia and India, as fellow Indian Ocean nations, to enhance regional cooperation in promoting maritime safety and security and welcomed the important role of the bilateral White Shipping Agreement.
“Both countries remain strongly committed to the breadth of their defence ties, including through ongoing annual staff talks for army, navy and air forces,” it stated.
It also said that “the two Prime Ministers reiterated their strong commitment to combat terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and stressed that there can be no justification for acts of terror on any grounds whatsoever”.
“They asserted that the fight against terrorists, terror organisations and networks should also identify, hold accountable and take strong measures against all those who encourage, support and finance terrorism, provide sanctuary to terrorists and terror groups, and falsely extol their virtues,” the statement said.
In this regard, the two Prime Ministers also welcomed the signing of an MoU on fighting international terrorism and transnational organised crime.
Modi and Turbull also jointly inaugurated through video-conferencing the TERI-Deakin Nanobiotechnology Centre in Gurugram, set up by India’s TERI and Australia’s Deakin University.
Earlier on Monday, Turnbull was accorded a ceremonial welcome at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Thereafter, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on him.
In the afternoon, Modi and Turnbull travelled by a Delhi Metro train to visit the Akshardham temple in east Delhi.
The Australian Prime Minister arrived here on Sunday on a four-day state visit to India – his first to India since he assumed office in September 2015.
His predecessor Tony Abbott had visited India in September 2014 and this was followed by Modi’s visit to Australia in November that year.


 Slamming the BJP for making Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) “bankrupt” and a “den of corruption” in its 10-year-long rule, Swaraj India on Monday said that the party should refrain from contesting the polls as “atonement”.
“True atonement for the BJP which made the MCD bankrupt and den of corruption in its 10 years of rule will be only when the party abstains completely from the MCD elections and apologise to people of Delhi, instead of just denying ticket to its sitting councillors,” said Swaraj India President Yogendra Yadav.
Conducting a road show for party candidates in North MCD region, he reiterated his party’s promise of “Saaf Dil, Saaf Dilli.
Seeking to expose the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) misrule in the MCD, he said that in a bid to hide its misdeeds as a party, the BJP has declared that none of its sitting councillors will be fielded in this election “as if those individuals were responsible for this systemic loot and rot in MCD”.
“BJP cannot absolve itself of its sins by simply refusing ticket to its councillors…. If BJP is truly worried about repentance, it should refrain from even contesting these elections,” he said


The Competition Commission of India (CCI) on Monday said that it has approved the acquisition of Reliance Retail’s dairy business by Heritage Foods, owned by Andhra Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
In a tweet, the CCI said: “CCI_India approves acquisition of dairy business of Reliance Retail by Heritage Foods.”
Last year, Heritage Foods executed a binding agreement to acquire the dairy business of Reliance Retail through slump sale.
The dairy business of Reliance Retail operates pan-India dairy procurement, processing and distribution platform under two brands — ‘Dairy Life’ and ‘Dairy Pure’.
The Heritage Group, founded by Naidu in 1992, has six business divisions — dairy, retail, agri, bakery, renewable energy and vetCa – under its flagship company Heritage Foods.
The annual turnover of Heritage Foods crossed Rs 2,380.58 crore in 2015-16.


 A meeting of think-tanks from various sectors here on Saturday urged Indian industrialists to invest money in mariculture in order to increase fish production in the country.
The meeting was held here at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) to mark 37 years of research, education and development of mariculture, or the branch of aquaculture involving cultivation of marine organisms for food and other products in the open ocean, an enclosed section of the ocean, or in tanks, ponds or raceway filled with seawater, in India.
Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s Deputy Director General J.K. Jena asked the industrialists in the sector to come forward and concentrate on mariculture besides their entrepreneurial initiatives in shrimp farming.
“Since the Union Government is deliberating on eradicating poverty in India by 2030, it will promote and encourage all initiatives to increase the production in food and nutrition sectors,” he said adding that mariculture was one of the best alternative for ensuring the food security in the country.
The meet proposed to formulate industrial advisory bodies with the participation of scientists and industrialists to accelerate mariculture entrepreneurship in India.
Experts opined that consortium of experts from research, industry, banking was required to elevate the mariculture industry from a mediocre level to corporate level.
Representing the industry, industrialist P. Surendran said mariculture was one of the emerging and prospective sectors for entrepreneurs.
CMFRI Director A. Gopalakrishnan said private-public partnership was need of the hour to boost mariculture in the country.
“We have to emulate the successful mariculture models implemented by the Southeast Asian countries where mariculture has grown significantly catering to the food and economic security of those countries. The Chinese model of developing seafood based products from plant-origin materials such as seaweeds and micro algae can complement our requirements on growing demand for seafood,” he said


Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar on Saturday came down heavily on political parties across the spectrum for their failure to link economic growth with socio-economic justice for the weaker sections of the society.
According to Justice Khekar, although political parties talk about economic reforms and globalisation in their manifestos, they never link the achievements of economic growth with the constitutional goal of socio-economic justice for the SCs, STs and other weaker sections of society.
Justice Khehar expressed his views while speaking at the inauguration of the two-day all India seminar on “Economic Recovery with Reference to Electoral Issues”, organised here by the Confederation of Indian Bar.
Pointing out that the manifestos of different parties were “remarkably” similar, Khehar said the problem was with their implementation where the generation of wealth remained compartmentalised.
He said there was no link of the economic growth with the goal of socio-economic justice as spelt out in the Directive Principles of State Policy in the Constitution.
It was always easy to speak of constitutional values and all the more easy to speak in abstract, Khehar said.
He said the question is: “How to operate the economic system for the good of the people through constitutional means?”
Chief Justice also felt that economic growth has to be coupled with economic justice and economic harmony.
In a poser, he asked what was the purpose of generating wealth and said that the concentration of wealth and means of generating it should not be detrimental to the common interests.
Calling for the accountability of elected representatives, President Pranab Mukherjee in his address said that all political parties would have to develop a voluntary code of conduct for their working.
He said that except for the two general elections of 1957 and 1984, in no other election had any party in the Lok Sabha secured 50-plus percentage of votes. “Even in 1984, the Congress under late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got only 48.6 per cent of votes.”
Mukherjee said the difficulty was that those getting less than 50 per cent votes and not in power had “every thing but no accountability”.
Stating that a strong electoral system was necessary to strengthen the democratic structure of India, the President said that timely reforms were necessary which not only would give justice to the people but also to the ideals enshrined in the Constitution.
He urged the gathering for a dispassionate analysis of the way in which our electoral process is functioning with a view to address the shortcomings in the system.
Calling for a healthy debate, the President said that Parliament was not just a deliberating body but also a decision making body.
Addressing the inaugural session, Justice Dipak Misra said that the free and fair elections were imperative for the democracy, and for the purity and credibility of elections, it should be clear that purchasing power had no room in the electoral process.
Justice Misra said that for democracy to survive, the rule of law must be there and the candidates contesting election must bear in mind that contesting election was not an investment and they would have to nurture and serve their constituency.
Emphasising on the moral conduct, Justice Misra said people must remember the phrase “out of debt, out of danger”.
Senior counsel Harish Salve, who is a founder member of the Confederation of Indian Bar, said: “If we can reduce the cost of election, we can proceed on cleansing of the funding of elections.”
CIB President Pravin H. Parekh delivered the welcome address and its Vice President Ravindra Shrivastava gave the vote of thanks


India is coming up with an open licensing policy and Open Educational Resources (OER) consortium to share educational content at a national level, a varsity official said here on Saturday.
“MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development) is coming up with a Open Licensing Policy and there is also a plan to come up with a OER consortium at a national level where all universities and all distance education institutions can come together with all the repository of the content that they have and a culture of sharing can develop,” Uma Kanjilal of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), told IANS here.
Kanjilal, professor and chair, Faculty of Library and Information Science in IGNOU’s School of Social Sciences, said a draft policy has been prepared and the university is one of the partners.
Kanjilal was speaking on the sidelines of the ‘Open Access: Road to Freedom’, the 33rd annual convention of the Society for Information Science organised in partnership with CSIR’s Indian Institute of Chemical Biology.
“The content will be made available so you need to sign up to this consortium so you will become a partner in sharing the content among the partners. So it will reduce the duplication of efforts. For example, if IGNOU has created a content, then the partner university need not do it again. The can use it and customise it,” she said.
On India’s own internet platform SWAYAM, Kanjilal said the courses are now available to international students as well.
“There are around 300 courses available and in the next three years, we will have around 30 million students and 2,000 MOOCs (massive open online course) courses,” she said.
About the challenges in preparing MOOCs, she said there is still a tendency among faculty to emulate the teaching pattern in a classroom.
“There is a need to condense one-hour classroom lectures into shorter ones and faculties have to be willing to prepare courses for online platform,” said Kanjilal, who also drew attention to the challenge of increasing trend of monetisation of MOOCs globally.
“The popular courses are all monetised,” she added.


Rani Rampal and Gurjit Kaur fired a brace each as India thumped Belarus 4-0 to set up a final against Chile in the women’s Hockey World League (HWL) Round 2 here on Saturday.
Gurjit struck twice from the set-piece in the 13th and 58th minutes, while Rani Rampal’s penalty stroke conversion in the 20th minute and a clinical field goal in the 40th minute gave India a convincing victory.
With the win. Sjoerd Marijne-coached India secured a berth to take part in the HWL Semi-Final to be held in June/ July. The HWL Semi-Final is a qualifier for the FIH World Cup 2018.
Belarus, who were thrashed by India during the bilateral series in the south Asian country in March, were the perfect opponent for India to gain a psychological advantage even before the start of the match.
India were dominant right from the start. Even though Belarus won two early penalty corners in the fourth and the ninth minutes, the Indian team’s defence was impressive as they denied an early lead.
India were quick to earn their first penalty corner in the 13th minute and it was Gurjit Kaur whose stunning goal gave India a 1-0 lead. Skipper Rampal doubled India’s tally when she successfully converted a penalty stroke in the 20th minute.
Both teams traded penalty corners in the third quarter. Belarusian Yuliya Mikheichyk’s hard-struck drag flick was saved by India’s goalkeeper Savita in the 40th minute.
Indian eves played fast-paced hockey as they rallied back to the striking circle with Rampal scoring a solo brilliant field goal that made it 3-0 in the 40th minute.
The final quarter saw Belarus make desperate attempts to come back into the game. They began the quarter with a penalty awarded to them in the 49th minute but was promptly denied by Savita. The Indian defence was inch-perfect giving Belarus fewer opportunities to enter their striking circle.
Gurjit’s splendid penalty stroke goal in the 58th minute sealed the match for the Indians.
“We are very excited and happy about the win. We played as a strong unit with better defence and I am happy we did not miss penalty corner chances. Our aim was to enter the Final and we look forward to a good game against Chile,” stated skipper Rani.
In the other semi-final, Chile beat Uruguay 2-1.
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