April 2

Politics & the Nation

• Education is fundamental right for kids aged 6-14
• Education for children aged between 6 and 14 has finally become a fundamental right with the notification of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act on Thursday.
• While the notification is an important milestone, the government acknowledged that the real challenge lay in the effective implementation of the Act.
• With education becoming an entitlement, efforts will have to be made to ensure that those on the margins are able to seek redressal.
• It has been a long and arduous journey for this fundamental right. Despite the unanimous support for the move, the enabling RTE legislation hasn’t had an easy passage. Work on RTE was started by the NDA government soon after Parliament passed the constitutional amendment in December 2002. The first delay came when the NDA was voted out of power in May 2004. Work on the RTE was then taken up by the Kapil Sibal committee of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE). The Sibal draft slated the financial implications, estimated by the then National Institute of Education Planning and Administration, at a minimum of Rs 3,21,196 crore to a maximum Rs 4,36,458.5 crore over six years. This is where the proposed legislation ran into trouble. The question of funding was to hold up the bill for the next four-and-a-half years. The ministry of human resource development then worked to bring down the financial implication of the bill. Finally, whittling it down to Rs 171,000 crore.
• Some excellent words in the context of the dedication of the right to education act:
• Rights, in other words, are not passively dispensed by an enlightened administration to a supine populace, but actively enforced by citizens in exercise of their political agency.
• The point is, the law should be seen as a means of mobilising and empowering the people, rather than as an act of emancipation in itself.

Finance & Economy

• Migrants land sops as labour shortage grows
• Years of migration has depleted the workforce back home, and today, Punjab and Kerala are rolling out the red carpet for immigrant hands from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Orissa as their mostly-agrarian economies face stagnation in the face of a crippling labour shortage. Plantation owners in Kerala and the Punjab government say that to retain the immigrant workforce, they will offer provident fund, gratuity and pension.
• PM bats for caution on easing of capital account
• Amid concerns that India may attract a chunk of the money flooding emerging markets, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that there are good reasons to be cautious in opening up the capital account. But he was categorical that Indian companies must have the instruments needed to hedge against exchange rate volatility.
• Look at what he reportedly said: “...Growth will occur in an economic environment where India will remain open to the world and Indian companies will operate globally. Management of forex risk would be an important concern in future and the financial system must, therefore, provide our companies with instruments they need to manage these risks at reasonable costs.”

Health

• The state of our health
• Take a look at these distressing statistics!!!
• The following lead you to conclude that India’s primary healthcare system dysfunctional: the system has failed to deliver basic health services to the poor, notwithstanding numerous schemes launched with fanfare, including the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana and Health For All.
• The Economic Survey, 2009-10, highlights a shortage of 20,486 sub-centres, 4,477 PHCs and 2,337 community health centres (CHCs) based on 2001 population norm. Only 13% of rural residents have access to a PHC, 33% to a sub-centre, 9.6% to a hospital and 28.3% to a dispensary or clinic. About two-thirds of country’s registered hospitals are private.
• The National Rural Health Mission, launched on April 12, 2005, with an annual allocation of Rs 12,000 crore — increased by Rs 2,057 crore in 2009-10 — aims at providing accessible health services to the poorest households in the remotest regions of the country. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana claims to have covered 4.5 million below-poverty-line families by issuing biometric cards. In reality, the programmes deliver far short of their avowed claims.
• Over 17 lakh children in the country die annually before reaching their first birthday. India accounts for a fifth of the global disease burden: 23% of child deaths, 20% of maternal deaths, 30% of tuberculosis cases, 68% of leprosy cases and 14% of HIV cases. Tuberculosis kills around 2 million people a year around the world; in India, the disease takes a toll of 4,21,000 lives.
• With almost a third of the country's population living in cities — more than half the number in 23 metropolitan areas — the healthcare infrastructure is far too inadequate. While there is need to raise the availability of doctors from 6,00,000 to 20,00,000 and nurses from 16,00,000 to 44,00,000, some 165 medical colleges annually turn out only about 16,000 doctors in the country.
• THE number of physicians per 1,000 population for the world is 1.5; for India, it is 0.6. Against a world average of 3.98 hospital beds per 1,000 population, Russia has 9.7, Brazil 2.6, China 2.5, and India 0.9. Per-capita per-year in-patient admissions for India aggregate 1.7 compared to 9 for the world and 5.5 in lowincome countries.
• Public health expenditure in the country has been only about 0.9% of GDP — central government 0.29% and state governments 0.61% — which is below the low-income countries’ average of 1%, and even sub-Saharan Africa’s 1.7%.
• As much as 63% of the entire spending goes to wages and salaries, leaving meagre resources for drugs, supplies, equipment, infrastructure and maintenance.

International

• Manufacturing Inc roars back to life across globe
• Factories in the US, Europe and Asia cranked up production last month, suggesting recovery from a deep recession was taking root in economies around the globe.
• The US manufacturing sector grew at its fastest pace in more than five years last month and activity in Europe bounced higher, with a cheaper euro helping stimulate exports.
• UK manufacturing expanded at its fastest pace since 1994 while China’s vast industrial sector also grew in March.

April1

Politics & the Nation

• A very good editorial comment in the context of the ongoing communal strife in Hyderabad
  
• There is a wider problem of a brand of politics that sustains on religious strife and competitive identity management. Communal strife will continue to plague India until that politics is challenged and delegitimised. But at a local level, heightened community policing and participation in dispute resolution can prove effective in averting such conflagrations.
• The economics of higher education militates against the entry of the best foreign universities in India. Comment.
  
• If you are ever asked such a question, nothing can be a better answer than today's op-ed by TT Ram Mohan. Take a look. An interesting read.
• Khurshid roots for more districts in minority list
  
• In a move that is certain to generate a lot of controversy, the minority affairs ministry on Wednesday said it wanted the government to change the eligibility criteria for classification of “minority concentrated districts (MCDs)” by reducing the criterion for such grouping from the existing 25% to 15%.
• Union minority affairs minister Salman Khurshid reportedly said that the government also favoured a “fresh look” at the Supreme Court-sponsored restriction on the government for notifying any community as “national minority”.
• An interesting news report. Take a look at it in full here.
• On Ranganath Mishra Commission report
  
• Here is an explosive article on the report. Penned by no less a person than the Member Secretary of that Commission who gave a dissenting report, this is quite forceful. Take a look.

Personality

• Gen. V.K. Singh takes charge
  
• He assumed charge today as the country's Army Chief. More about it here.

Finance & Economy

• Surprise surge in bond yields helps banks cut treasury losses
  
• Banks, which are struggling to meet loan-growth targets for FY10, have managed to stave off huge treasury losses as a surprising year-end surge in bond prices helped them set aside less money to provide for possible losses on investments. Banks have to set aside funds to make up for notional losses as bond prices fall whenever yields rise.
• Yields on the benchmark 10-year government bond, which crossed 8.02% on March 22, retreated to 7.85% at the end of the last day of the fiscal, although analysts and research reports had earlier forecast that yields would close at over 8% in end-March. Had yields closed on Wednesday at over 8% as forecast earlier, banks would have had to set aside at least over Rs 1,000 crore to provide for a fall in the value of the securities in their investment portfolio.
• The rally in bond prices over the last few days, however, has ensured that banks will be able to cut their treasury losses.
• One reason for the unexpected rally is that banks stand to gain hugely if bond prices rise. And this time, banks are more exposed to treasury losses as they have been forced to invest 31.3% of their deposits in government bonds owing to poor loan growth compared to previous years.
• Government bonds form the largest component of a bank’s investment portfolio, since the banking regulator mandates that a fourth of a bank’s liabilities should be in liquid government securities, known as the statutory liquidity ratio.
• Banks have to arrive at the market value of their bond portfolio based on the yield on the last day of the quarter.
• Banks hold government bonds under three categories. Available for sale (AFS), held to maturity (HTM) and held for trading (HFT). AFS and HFT are the two categories where banks have to provide for profits and losses, according to market prices of the securities. Treasury officials usually hold their medium-term securities (3-5 year segment) in the AFS category. These need to be marked to market (MTM), inviting provisions. The third category, held to-maturity, or HTM, which need not be marked to market and hence is not vulnerable to depreciation.
• All of the above excerpt is fine; but why do bond prices fall when yields rise? This is the question that should be bothering you; right? You will find an excellent explanation in this beautiful article. Read it if you care.
• Farmers milking tech for big yield
  
• RFID tags help improve production at dairies. How are they doing it? By right sizing the food given to cattle everyday.
• Overeating among cattle can lead to fatal diseases such as enterotoxemia, and insufficient diet can cause weight loss among other complexities.
• A tiny microchip, or radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, punched on the cattle's ear sends information about her daily dietary needs and feeding details, among many other information, to a radio sensor located inside the farm premises. This, in turn, communicates with computer systems maintained in the farm.
• The data collected by this system is then accessed real time by dairy managers and other supervisors for carrying out specific activities, such as monitoring the health and changing the nutritional mix.
• Thousands of milk farmers in Maharashtra and Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu are becoming part of a technology revolution that can have a far-reaching impact on milk productivity of the Indian dairy industry.
• Though India is one of the world’s largest milk-producing nations, the yields here are very low when compared with others. The American dairy industry, for instance, has an average yield of 10,000-11,000 litres per lactation cycle, compared with around 1,000-1,200 litres for buffaloes in India.
• Brazil took our Gir breed 20 years ago and has made it ten times more productive using technology. It’s an irony that in India our per animal productivity has not improved since 1950.
• Unlike a plastic plate with a unique 15-digit number—the farmers’ traditional way to identify cattle, an RFID tag is a more intelligent device. The tag consists of a microchip with 4kb memory for storing information and a radio antenna which transmits information via Bluetooth and other wireless protocols to a computer or a mobile handset.
• Food prices cool on rich reap
  
• Grain, cooking oil and sugar prices have dropped by up to a third in March due to better-than-expected harvests across the world, forcing popular Indian food brands to slash shelf prices and bring relief to consumers.
• The price crash in India mirrors declines in the global market. Global wheat prices are at a two-year low because of ample supply while sugar prices are heading for the biggest quarterly drop since 1985 on hopes of higher output in India and Brazil. Palm oil is at a seven-week low.
• Prices could decline further in the next couple of weeks as wheat, chana, maize and sugar pile up within India, and cooking oil in the main exporting countries such as Argentina, Malaysia and Indonesia.
• The slump could bring relief from sticker shock to consumers hurt by soaring food prices after a weak monsoon last year hit farm output.
• Net services earnings may fall in 9 years!
  
• India's net earnings from trade in services such as software and consultancy are headed for the first fall in a decade, leaving the rupee’s value at the mercy of overseas investment flows.
• Exports of services other than software may not be accelerating as fast as merchandise exports since they are not so essential for crisis-hit Western economies.
• Net invisibles -— the difference between income and expenditure on items such as travel, insurance and software -— fell 7.7% in the nine months ended December, preliminary data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) show. It last fell in the fiscal year ended 2001.
• The fall in net earnings from invisibles could make the rupee unstable against the dollar as the rupee rally last quarter—the second straight one—was more due to portfolio investments than improvement in trade.

International

• What is 'market economy status' and why is India refusing to grant one to China?
  
• All about it in today's ET in the Classroom column.
• In the context of the recent global financial crisis the phrase 'systemic risk' became a permanent fixture in many an article.
  
• What exactly is it? Take a look at how BIS (Bank for International Settlements) defines it:
• "a risk of disruption to financial services that is caused by an impairment of all or parts of the financial system and has the potential to have serious negative consequences for the real economy”.

Language Lessons

• gyp: Verb
• Deprive of by deceit
• eg: We all are an agglomeration of atoms and by crashing atom against atom we are only trying to prove that all religious tomes gypped us with Genesis.