Daily News Notes: 19th April, 2012

• ·         India conducted a successful test-fire of its indigenously developed "Agni-5" (three stage, solid propellant, surface-to-surface, nuclear capable, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) with a strike range of over 5,000 km from a test range of the Integrated Test Range in Wheeler Island, Odisha coast. Only the United States, Russia, France and China possess the capability to operate an ICBM at present. The Agni-5 is about 17 meter long and two metre wide with launch weight of around 50 tonnes. The sophisticated missile can carry a nuclear warhead of more than one tonne. It may be recalled that  India's first satellite Aryabhatta was also launched on 19th April in 1975. “Agni 5 is a 3-stage missile, the first stage burned out, gave the required velocity and after that it separated.  Similarly the missile reached it second and third phases after that it reached the crucial re-entry phase which is the most difficult phase for any ballistic missile of this range.” A number of new technologies developed indigenously were also successfully tested in this A-5 Mission: The redundant Navigation systems, very high accuracy Ring Laser Gyro based Inertial Navigation System (RINS) and the most modern and accurate Micro Navigation System (MINS) ensured the Missile reach the target point within few meters of accuracy; the high speed onboard computer and fault tolerant software along with robust and reliable bus guided the Missile flawlessly.
• ·         The Supreme Court today sought response from the Centre and the Odisha government on a petition seeking to restrain the release of jailed Maoists in exchange for captive BJD MLA. The apex court initially expressed disinclination to issue any notices, but relented after counsel for Major General (Retd.) Gangurdep Bakshi persisted with the plea. Bakshi, a counter-terrorism operations expert, had pleaded with the apex court that the state government should be restrained from releasing the Maoists as they were captured by security forces, which had to put their lives on stake to nab them.
• ·         In Chhattisgarh, naxalites killed a local leader of the anti-naxal movement, ‘Salwa Judum’ in the Bijapur district. His  body was recovered today in the Bhairamgarh police station area. The victim had been abducted by the naxalites three days ago. In another incident in the Sukma district, naxalites kidnapped 4 villagers last night when they were guarding their crop in the field near village Agargatta. The abducted include one who is a Salwa Judum activist. The Police have been trying to trace the whereabouts of the kidnapped villagers.
• ·         The government  sought to liberalise the external commercial borrowing (ECB) norms for the power sector. In a significant easing of utilisation guidelines, power sector companies will, henceforth, be able to use up to 40 per cent of ECB loans to refinance their rupee debt, provided the balance is utilised for investments in new projects. Till now, power companies were permitted to use only 25 per cent of the ECB to refinance their domestic rupee-debt loan.
• ·         Chief Information Commissioner Jannat Hussain said it would help if there was a ‘green channel' to help the tribal population access the Right to Information Act and improve their lot. Awareness levels, especially among tribal people, the pensioners, including the old and the infirm, needed to be improved. He referred to how the officials responding to the first appeal within 30 days, but regretted that it was not being followed as far as the second appeal was concerned.
• ·         Suresh Kalmadi, and the former Secretary-General, Lalit Bhanot, now facing trial for alleged corruption in the award of a contract to a Swiss firm, have been allowed to travel to Kazakhstan to attend the 73{+r}{+d}meeting of the Asian Athletics Association Council. The CBI objected to the grant of permission to the two accused for attending the meeting to be held from April 25 to 28. But Special Judge Talwant Singh ruled in their favour. The CBI alleged that despite the day-to-day trial proceedings having been ordered, the accused were adopting delaying tactics. The Asian Athletics Association Council, it pointed out, was not a government / statutory / constitutional body. Seeking dismissal of their applications, the CBI said the accused were high-profile, influential and well-connected persons; if they were given permission, “it would open a Pandora's box, further thwarting the efforts for speedy trial.” Furthermore, the other accused would soon start seeking similar indulgence. However, Kalmadi said he had to address the council on April 27 in his capacity as president of the Asian Athletics Association. This made his presence at the meeting essential. Mr. Bhanot said he was a member of the council, and he had been officially invited to the meeting. [deteriorating condition of indian political and judiciary]
• ·         The plan outlay for Andhra Pradesh for 2012-13 has been fixed at Rs.48,935 crore, which is 13.8 per cent higher than that given for 2011-12 (around Rs.43,000 crore). This is the highest outlay for any State in the country. AP C.M. told journalists that the Planning Commission had been asked to help the government to get Central funds for organising the forthcoming bio-diversity convention which needed Rs.1,000 crore for infrastructure development. Being the biggest programme to be organised in India with the participation of 8,000 delegates from 144 countries, the money that might be given to A.P., a la Delhi for Commonwealth Games, could be used for beautification of Hyderabad and improving security infrastructure, he said.
• ·         The Prime Minister will inaugurate the physical facility of the state-of-the-art Linear Accelerator with Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT), Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) and SRS/SRT at the Dr B Borooah Cancer Institute in Guwahati, commissioned with grants-in-aid from North Eastern Council (NEC) and Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). Dr. Bhubaneswar Borooah Cancer Institute was established on 18th November, 1973 and Government of India recognized it as a Regional Cancer Centre in year 1980. Later on, Government of Assam took over the Management of the Institute from the Board of Trustee in 1986 while retaining its autonomy. The institute is being developed as an institution of excellence and has all the modern infrastructure facilities and experts for cancer treatment. Dr. Manmohan Singh will also be briefed about the Revitalization Project Phase-IV (RPP-IV) for up-gradation of Dr. B. Borooah Cancer Institute to a centre of excellence.
• ·         In its World Economic Outlook released, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said India would need to accelerate economic reforms to achieve its ‘potential' growth rate even as it expressed concern over high inflation. The Indian government has not been able to push through long pending reforms in insurance, pension, banking and the retail sector because of political reasons. The statement comes a day after the RBI reduced interest rates by 0.50 percentage point to arrest declining growth. Indian economy was growing at over 9 per cent before the global financial crisis in 2008, pulled it down to 6.7 per cent in 2008-09. The growth rate in 2011-12 touched a 3-year low of 6.9 per cent on account of factors such as high commodity prices, slowdown in domestic demand and RBI's tight money policy. The IMF also called for rationalisation of fuel and fertilizer subsidy and encouraging tax reform, especially the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which is hanging fire.
• ·         Calling for demilitarisation of the Siachen glacier for the development of Pakistan and environmental reasons, Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) Ashfaq Parvez Kayani advocated peaceful coexistence with India, adding that the civil and military leaderships of the two countries should discuss ways to resolve the issue. After visiting Gayari — the site of the avalanche in Siachen that buried 124 soldiers of 6 Northern Light Infantry and 11 civilians early on April 7 — General Kayani said Pakistan was not manning those treacherous heights out of choice. “The world knows why we are in Siachen,” referring to the Pakistani narrative that it was India which started this dispute in 1984. Maintaining that peaceful coexistence between the two neighbours was very important, the COAS said the Army understood well the need to bring down the defence budget. About the harm caused to the environment by the military occupation of the Siachen glacier, General Kayani conceded the point. “This is the glacier that feeds our rivers, particularly the Indus.” In fact, according to him, the effect of militarisation of Siachen on the environment was not just a local issue but a global problem.
• ·         Its economy may be in the grips of a slowdown, its polity paralysed and markets morose, but all this hasn’t prevented India from overtaking Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy in purchasing power terms. Data just released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that India’s gross domestic product in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms stood at $4.46 trillion in 2011, marginally higher than Japan’s $4.44 trillion, making it the third-biggest economy after the United States and China. India’s share in world GDP in terms of PPP, a measure of relative consumer prices across countries, stood at 5.65% in 2011 against Japan’s 5.63%, with the gap expected to widen significantly by 2017. In five years, the IMF estimates the share of India’s GDP in PPP terms would grow to 8.09% compared with 4.8% for Japan. “The PPP system allows GDP comparisons to be made by asking how much money would be needed to purchase the same goods and services in two countries and using that to calculate an implicit foreign exchange rate. Under this method, a dollar should be able to buy the same amount of goods anywhere in the world and exchange rates should adjust accordingly.” It also strips away distortions that come with market exchange rates, which are often volatile, affected by political and financial factors that do not lead to immediate changes in income and tend to understate the standard of living in poor countries. The Economist magazine’s proprietary Big Mac Index, which takes the price of a McDonald burger across 120 countries to calculate the ‘real’ price of their currencies, is another crude way to measure PPP. India was included in the index recently. It showed that the Indian rupee was undervalued by 62% against the US dollar in January. PPP methods help adjust income to prices for a meaningful comparison on quality of life in countries with widely different prices and incomes. India, according to the IMF’s calculations, was able to overtake Japan in 2011 because its economy grew 7.24% whereas in the case of Japan, it shrank 0.75%,hit by a tsunami that ravaged the country and exacerbated the adverse impact of global economic slowdown. “While India may have beaten Japan under this particular system of calculation, under more conventional methods of measurement, it has to travel a long distance to catch up. Under the regular method of GDP calculation, India’s economy is well behind Japan.” Even assuming an average economic growth rate of 7.5% over the next five years, the Indian economy will be only $2.9 trillion compared with Japan’s $6.69 trillion. For the fiscal year to end-March 2013, official forecasts are for GDP growth of around 7%, slightly higher than the 6.9% expected in the previous year and much lower than 8.4% the year before. Economists reckon that India will continue to lag behind when it comes to matching living standards of its population with more developed western and Asian economies. Yet, with its demographic advantage and prospects of sustainable high growth over the next five years, the country is expected to consistently improve its global economic standing.