News : 1-7 Oct 2013

Appointments :

Resignations/Retirements

Obituaries

1. Tom Clancy, whose high-tech, cold war thrillers such as The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games made him the most widely read and influential military novelist of his time, has died.

Awards

Sports

International

1. A Bangladesh war crimes tribunal  awarded death penalty to Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, a top ranking opposition leader, for murder and genocide during the country’s Liberation War in 1971.
2. The Democratic-led Senate rejected the latest House Republican effort to negotiate on a spending bill stalled by conservative efforts to derail the health care overhaul.In a 54-46 party-line vote, the Senate turned aside a House request to name negotiators to a conference to resolve differences.
3. President Vladimir Putin has been nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize by a Russian advocacy group for his key role in preventing a US missile strike on Syria and initiatives to dismantle Damascus’ chemical weapons.
4. Malaysian lawmakers approved changes to a crime-prevention law which could be abused by authorities to hold people without trial for years and negate the prime minister Najib Razak’s pledge to protect human rights.PM is criticized for introducing the changes less than two years after abolishing laws that had occasionally been used in past decades to hold political dissenters without charge. Legislators in Parliament’s lower house passed the changes to the Prevention of Crime Act after a heated debate. The changes must be endorsed by Parliament’s upper house and the country’s constitutional monarch before they can take effect, but they are unlikely to encounter resistance at those stages.

National

1. India and Sri Lanka will  ink an agreement for the execution of the 500 MW thermal power project at Sampur in Trincomalee at a cost of Rs. 4,000 crore.
2. India’s commercial export of power to Bangladesh commenced on Saturday with the inauguration of the Bangladesh-India Power Transmission Centre at western Bherampura, adjacent to West Bengal.India will export 500 megawatts of electricity a day to Bangladesh over a period of 35 years. A 125-kilometre transmission line, 40 km of it in Bangladesh, connects the two substations.
3. Inter-company LPG portability comes into force in 24 cities.
4.  SMS complaint cell at Thanjavur municipal office is the first such facility in the whole of Tamil Nadu .
5. A recommendation of the Election Commission (EC) for a “cooling off period” to bar top bureaucrats from joining politics or contesting polls immediately on exit from service has been rejected by the government which feels such a step will not be in harmony with the constitutional provisions.

Polity

Economics

1. Private insurer SBI Life Insurance on Thursday launched ‘Smart Power Insurance’ plan, which is designed to care for investor’s twin needs of insurance and investment.
2. The Yashwant Sinha-led Standing Committee on Finance has argued strongly against grant of banking licences to corporate houses . Stating that industrial houses may not be geared to achieve the national objectives of financial inclusion, it has recommended that banking and industry be kept separate.

Env & Ecology

1. A huge cluster of jellyfish forced one of the world’s largest nuclear reactors of Oskarshamn nuclear plant in southeastern Sweden to shut down by producing waves.

Science & Tech

1. Twitter revealed plans  to raise 1 billion dollars in an initial public offering, setting the stage for the most eagerly-awaited tech offering since Facebook’s over-hyped public launch in May 2012.
2. In a top-level reshuffle, software services major Wipro,, appointed Soumitro Ghosh as head of Wipro Infotech replacing Senior Vice-President and Business Head of Global Infrastructure Services Anand Sankaran, who quit the company hours before the rejig was announced.
3. Indigenously manufactured vaccine to prevent the deadly Japanese encephalitis.The vaccine being used at present is imported from China and the government often had problems with its procurement, but the domestically prepared vaccine would be readily available, both in the government-run immunisation programme and in the open market.Vaccination is part of the government’s National Programme for Prevention and Control of JE/AES.he new vaccine, JENVAC, available in single and double dose, has been manufactured by Genome Valley-based Bharat Biotech.

Culture

1. A monolithic stone idol of Lord Buddha belonging to the 6th A.D. was unearthed by a team of epigraphists at Kavinadu tank, the largest in the district

Land Swap Deal

English: Map of the British Indian Empire from Imperial Gazetteer of India (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Bill—the India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement is again pending to be introduced in  parliament legislation.Such roadblocks hamper gaining trust of neighbors .India often suffers a “perception problem” in the eyes of its neighbors, which often view India with suspicion because of its size, economy and military might. That in turn encourages them to turn to China.

 

Bill contents :

 

1. The bill in question called for India to exchange 111 of its enclaves in Bangladesh in return for 51 Bangladesh enclaves in India.
2. Under the agreement India would give up claims for just over 17,000 acres of land which will be transferred to Bangladesh. In turn Bangladesh would cede around 7,000 acres, which would then join Indian territory.
3. A land swap agreement would also give citizenship rights to close to 52,000 people: 37,000 on the Bangladesh side and close to 15,000 on the Indian side. These stateless people, often victimized, would finally get rights and privileges as citizens, to the benefit of India’s human rights record.

 

Benefits

 

• A healthy relationship with Bangladesh would have other economic benefits. India could seek from Bangladesh as a goodwill gesture transit rights to its northeast, bringing development to a struggling region.
• A deal could also revive the moribund South Asia Growth Quadrangle (SAGQ is a practical solution to the region’s socio-economic problems), comprising India’s north east, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. And a deal would give a pre-election boost to a Bangladesh government that has generally been favorable to India.
• This deal could particularly benefit the North East and Assam. Resolving the land issues would enable borders in these areas to be secured.

 

Hurdles

 

• Any policy initiated by New Delhi towards Bangladesh needs to take the sensibilities of Assam into account. In addition to the historical immigration issue, there is Assam’s proximity to Bangladesh and the region’s own troubled history with India’s neighbor, extending back to the 1970s.
• There is a need to engage the people of Assam on a more direct level to talk about the benefits of the swap and any possible ramifications. Assam has a vibrant civil society, which should be engaged on this issue. In short, it is time for some public diplomacy.