1 November, 2009 To 15 November, 2009: Brain Tree

1/11/2010
BRAIN TREE
CURRENT AFFAIRS & GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
1st November, 2009 to 15th November, 2009

1. K. Radhakrishnan, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, (VSSC),
Thiruvananthapuram, took over as Chairman of the ISRO from G. Madhavan Nair. Dr.
Radhakrishnan also assumed office as chairman of the Space Commission and Secretary
of the Department of Space. From 2005 to 2008, he was the Director of the National
Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad which has now been named the National Remote-
Sensing Centre.
During the tenure of Mr. Madhavan Nair there were 25 successful launch vehicle and
space craft missions. The high point of his career was the ISRO putting in orbit
chandrayaan-1, India’s first scientific mission to the moon, on October 22nd , 2008. P.S.
Veeraraghavan, a rocket technologist, took over as Director, Vikra Sarabhai Space
Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, from K. Radhakrishnan who has been appointed
Chairman, ISRO.
2. The National University of Defence Technology ( NVDT) unveiled Chinas fastest

supercomputer Tianhe ( meaning, milky way ) it will in theory do more than one
quadrillion calculations per second ( one petaflop) at peak speed.
3. The South Asia Foundation (SAF) organized a peace festival in Amritsar with artists
from Pakistan and India. The foundation is the brainchild of Madanjeet Singh,
UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, who dreams of forming a rainbow coalition of eight
countries of South Asia- Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal
Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
4. The Silent Valley National Park ( Kerala ), one of the few remaining rainforests in the
country, gets one of the highest- or even the highest average annual rainfall in the
Western Ghats, according to the data of the past 10 years.
 The highest average annual rainfall received in the valley was 8,361.9 mm in
2001.
 The average annual rainfall of the Western Ghats ranges from 6,000 mm at
the crest of the ghats to as low as 600 mm in the valley portion.
 The world’s wettest place is Mawsynram in the Khasi hills of Meghalaya.
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5. In a major thrust to the Disinvestment Programme, the Cabinet Committee on

Economic Affairs ( CCEA) decided that all listed Central Public Sector Enterprises
would offload 10% of their holding in the public domain and all unlisted profitable state
–owned entities should go public.
 At present, there are 48 listed state-run companies, and 200 others, including
BSLL, qualify for listing.
 The government has also decided that all unlisted PSEs, which have made profit
in the past 3 years and have a positive net worth, should get listed on stock
exchanges.
6. The RBI concluded the purchase of 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF at an estimated
price of around Rs. 31, 490 Cr ( $ 6.70 billion ) under the IMF’s limited gold sales
programme.
 Under the Funds Articles of Agreement, all gold sales must be conducted at
prices based on market prices.
 This was done as part of the RBIs foreign exchange reserve management.
 India is the world’s biggest consumer of gold. China is the world biggest
producer of gold pushing US to second.
7. Ashok Chavan was sworn in CM of Maharashtra by Governor S.C. Jamir at the

Raj Bhavan. Chagan Bhujbal took the oath office and secrecy as Deputy CM. The
newly formed council has 38 ministers – 18 from the Congress and 20 from the NCP.
8. Britain’s Hindu leaders have launched “Bhumi Project” to fight climate change.
The plan follows a conference of faith leaders organized by the Alliance of Religions
and conservation, a charity set up by the Duke of Edinburgh to help religious
groups develop their own environmental programmes.
9. Going ahead with its objective of extending the scope of the NREGS through
convergence with other departments, the Centre has accepted a number of

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recommendations of the State governments as job works to be taken up under the
scheme:
 The scope of manual work has been enlarged.
 Construction of Community centres for social activities, school buildings,

Panchayat Bhavans e.t.c., aiming at creation of social infrastructure.
 As regards convergence, it has recommended taking up sanitation campaign
with labour component from the scheme and supported construction of houses
under various schemes as the Indira Awas Yojna, where the unskilled labour
component and earth work would be carried out under the NREGS fund as it
would serve as a cushion to escalation of cost.
 Similarly construction of houses for the Below Poverty Line ( BPL) families in
rural areas has been recommended by dovetailing with IAY and individual
household latrines for the BPL under the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC).
 To speed up rural electrification and take power to the lowest levels the
department has permitted erection of poles under the Rajiv Gandhi Rural
Electrification programme.
10. Google Wave, was recently launched as one the ‘Google products’ on Internet.
Google Wave can be described as a communication / collaboration tool in which
products like e-mail, IM discussion board and Wiki are rolled into one. A great
feature of ‘Google Wave’ is the extension facility that enables developers across the
world to enhance its functionality. Extensions come in two forms – ‘gadgets’ and
‘robots’:
 A ‘gadget’ is nothing but a small application that can be integrated with a wave
- like the google maps gadget.
 ‘Robots’ are software based automated participants made for a specific purpose
like IM bots.

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11. IBM has announced the creation of a new Business Analytics Centre of
Competency in Bangalore as part of efforts of strengthen its capabilities in the fast
growing are of analytics and optimization.
12. Cyclone ‘Phyan’ passed along the Mumbai and Konkan coast. The depression in the
Arabian sea gave way to a low pressure zone, accompanied by gusty winds.
13. The Shipping Ministry has decide to set up a broad based committee, comprising
various agencies, for sharing into. On traffic, post and issues related to ship security.
14. The United States House of Representatives recently passed the Affordable Health
Care for America Act. The bill which is expected to cost $ 1.1 trillion over 10 years,
constitutes the greatest reform of U.S. Health care since 1965 ( in 1985 Medicare, a tax
funded payer system for those aged 65 or over and those with particular medical
conditions, was created as part of the Johnson administration ‘Great society’
programme). If passed it will extend health cover to 96% of legally resident
Americans:
 This, it will do by widening the federally funded Medicare system to include the
36 million Americans who currently cannot afford health insurance or whose
employers do not provide it.
 The law- paid will be able to buy subsidized insurance or get cover from a
government plan.
 Employers will have to provide insurance or pay a payroll tax of up to 8%.
 Significantly, insurers will be banned from rejecting those with pre-existing
conditions and from dropping those whose needs increase, age limits will also be
abolished.
15. India and South Africa mutually agreed to widen the export basket and to work
closely for the early conclusion of India –South African Customs Union ( SACU),
Preferential Trade Agreement ( PTA) and the Bilateral Investment Promotion and
Protection Agreement (BIPA).

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 This was decided between the Union Commerce and Industry Minister, Anand
Sharma and the Minister of International relations and cooperation of South Africa,
Maite Knoana- Mashabane.
 Anand Sharma said that India had identified South Africa and other African
nations as the priority destinations under the diversified market scheme and Indian
exporters were being encouraged to tap these potential markets.
 Bilateral trade touched $ 7.41 billion in 2008-09.
o India’s imports from South Africa stood at $ 5.44 bn during this period and
India’s exports to South Africa were $ 1.97 bn.
o Indian investment were about $3 bn with many projects still under
implementation.
16. ‘Brazil’ has decided to impose a 2% tax on portfolio inflow. The move is aimed at
arresting sharp appreciation of its currency, the real which since the beginning of the
year has gained 36% against the dollar, undermining Brazils export competitiveness.
 In 1998, during Asian currency crisis, Malaysia also imposed controls to curb
currency speculation that had a devastating effect on neighbours.
 ‘Chile’ ( most successful of Latin American economies ) kept a portion of its
foreign investment flows in an interest free account with its Central bank for a
fixed period.
 The intention behind such controls is to keep a check on footloose global capital
that, given both its large volumes and propensity to move in and out of a country
in a matter of seconds, threatens macroeconomic management. Over the medium-
term, if properly implemented, these curbs could help governments prevent asset
bubbles.
 The intellectual basis for the tax is found in the work of the influential U.S.
economist and Nobel prize winner, ‘James Tobin’, who in the early 1970’s
proposed a small tax even as low as 0.1% - on foreign exchange transactions to
reduce volatility in the markets. Recently, G-20 has asked the IMF to examine
such

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proposals. Well endowed with natural resources, Brazil is having a commodity
boom and is among the first countries to come out of recession.
17. An important milestone in the path towards the Goods and Services Tax ( GST) has
been reached, with the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers deciding on a
three tier duty structure for the goods component.
 These will be a low rate for goods of mass consumption, a standard rate for
most other items and a premium rate for a small category of items.
 In the budget it was announced that in effect these would be two sets of GST
one for the goods, and the other for the services, levied at two levels. These two
would be mutually exclusive and operate across value chain.
Challenges of Implementing GST:
 It is at the state level that the introduction of the new tax which will replace
the state-level Value Added Tax (VAT) that came into being in 2005, is going to
be challenging. The two issues that dominate are in the areas of i) compensating
the states for possible revenue losses ii) Revamping the legal architecture.
 A multiple duty structure raises problems of classification and revenue leakages.
 States have to tackle with pressure groups for exemption or for levy at a lower
rate.
18. The total set of Greenhouse Gas (GHG); carbon-di-oxide, methane, nitrous oxide and
ozone; emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or
product is commonly called ‘carbon footprint’. This is often expressed as tonnes of
carbon-di-oxide equivalent (tCO2e). Virtually all human activities cause GHG emission,
agriculture, industrial production, deforestation, burning of any fuel, transport as well
as disposal of waste. To calculate a reliable carbon footprint it is mandatory to follow
a structured process to identify, classify and quantify all possible sources of GHG
emissions thoroughly. Typically there are three major categories of GHG emissions: 
Direct emissions that result from activities that are controlled by the organization /
individual.  Emissions from the use of electricity.  Indirect emissions from the
use of products and services.

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19. Bhilwara in Rajasthan was in the news recently due to the social audit conducted
their to assess the effectiveness of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Scheme.
The Bhilwara social audit experiment draws its strength from the NREGA audits conducted in
Andhra Pradesh. Andhra Pradesh was the first State in India to institutionalize social audit by
means of a Social Audit Directorate.
Since then, the state government has gone a further step with a committed budget for social
auditing and provisions to host audit results on its NREGA website. Experts feel that such
social audits create awareness among the poor beneficiaries whose slowly and surely learn to
hold the programme managers to account.
DISCLAIMER
The information presented above has been collected from a variety of sources. Brain Tree
exercises due care and caution in collecting the data before publication. Inspite of this, if
any omission, inaccuracy or printing errors occur with regard to the data, Brain Tree will
not be held responsible or liable.

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1 November, 2009 To 15 November, 2009: Brain Tree

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1/11/2010

1st November, 2009 to 15th November, 2009

2. The National University of Defence Technology ( NVDT) unveiled Chinas fastest

Training Tomorrow’s Administrators 1/4

5. In a major thrust to the Disinvestment Programme, the Cabinet Committee on

7. Ashok Chavan was sworn in CM of Maharashtra by Governor S.C. Jamir at the

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 The scope of manual work has been enlarged.

 Construction of Community centres for social activities, school buildings,

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1st November, 2009 to 15th November, 2009

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1st November, 2009 to 15th November, 2009

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