Set up special panel on linking of rivers, Supreme Court tells Centre

• The Supreme Court directed the Centre to constitute a ‘special committee' forthwith for inter-linking of rivers for the benefit of the entire nation.
• The Bench said: “This is a matter of national benefit and progress. We see no reason why any State should lag behind in contributing its bit to bringing the inter-linking river programme to a success, thus saving the people living in drought-prone zones from hunger and people living in flood-prone areas from the destruction caused by floods.”
• It said: “The NCAER report clearly opines that the interlinking of river projects will prove fruitful for the nation as a whole and would serve a greater purpose by allowing higher returns from the agricultural sector for the benefit of the entire economy. This would also result in providing varied benefits like control of floods, providing water to [the] drought-prone States, providing water to a larger part of agricultural land and even power generation. Besides … benefits to the country, it will help the countries like Nepal etc., uplifting India's international role. Importantly, they also point to a very important facet of interlinking of rivers, i.e., it may result in reduction of some diseases due to the supply of safe drinking water, and thus serve a greater purpose for humanity.”

Bihu Dance

• Bihu is a folk dance from the state of Assam in northeast India. 
• It is usually performed during the harvest festival of Bihu. Both men and women dance to traditional Assamese music. 
• The origin of this lively dance is uncertain but it was officially taken note of when King Rudra Singha invited Bihu dancers to perform on the occasion of Rongali Bihu sometime around 1694.

Chhau dance

• Chhau dance is indigenous to the states of Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand. 
• A mask dance, it was originally performed during the tribal harvesting festival. The tradition was continued in Orissa where in the 18th and 19th century, rulers took a keen interest in promoting and developing the dance. 
• It is basically a martial dance and themes include depiction of characters from the Mahabharata and Ramayana. Over the years, other themes have been included. There are three recognized styles of this dance form – Seraikella, Purulia and Mayurbhanj. But today it’s the Mayurbhanj style which is more popular.

Kalbelia dance

• Kalbelia dance is integral to the culture of Kalbelia tribe of Rajasthan. 
• The tribe’s main occupation is catching snakes and trading snake venom, and that’s why the movements and even the black dress is remnisicent of snakes. 
• Women perform the dance while the men take care of the music. Local and traditional musical instruments such as ‘dufli’, ‘been’ , ‘morchang’ and ‘dholak’ are used to create a rhythm on which the dancers perform. The beauty of the dance lies in the fact that as the music progresses, it gets faster and so do the movements of the dancer.

Garba

• Garba is the traditional folk dance from Gujarat which is performed during the nine-day long festival of Navratri. 
• The word is derived from ‘garbha deep’ and it means an earthern lamp in the sanctum of a temple. 
• Traditionally, Garba is performed in a circle around a lit lamp or photos of different avatars of Goddess Shakti.
• Modern-day Garba is heavily influenced by ‘raas’, a dance which is traditionally performed by men. 
• Today, the merger of two sees both men and women dance together. Women wear ‘chaniya choli’ while men are dressed in kafni pyjamas, short kurta and a colourful turban. 
• Garba is hugely popular today across the world, with competitions and Garba nights an annual feature during Navratri.

New family of limbless amphibians found

Chikilidae with a clutch of eggs and newly hatched young ones. At the centre eggs which are ready to hatch. (Right) Chikilidae with eggs

• Scientists have discovered a new family of limbless amphibians from northeast India with their ancient lineage traced to eastern and western parts of Africa, a relationship preserved from the time the southern continents broke up more than 150 million years ago.
• Kerala-born Delhi University scientist S.D. Biju and co-researchers from India and Europe have reported their discovery in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. 
• They have named the new family as Chikilidae and the new genus as Chikila, deriving the name from the Northeast Indian tribal language of Garo.
• Until this discovery, there were only nine known families of legless amphibians, also called caecilians, found across the wet tropical regions of Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, parts of East and West Africa, the Seychelles and northern and eastern parts of South America. 
• From morphological and DNA analyses, the researchers show that the new family had evolved independent of other species of caecilians starting from the time of the dinosaurs. Its closest relatives now live in Africa.

• “This is the amphibian discovery of the year,” said Darrel Frost, Curator-in-charge, American Museum of Natural History
• This discovery puts the spotlight on northeast India as a poorly studied region likely to harbour still more ancient lineages of organisms found nowhere else on Earth

India taken off polio endemic list by WHO

• India, which has been polio-free for over a year now, was taken off the list of polio endemic countries by the World Health Organisation.
• There were only four countries in the WHO endemic list, including Pakistan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
• After being removed from the list, India will have to remain polio free for the next two years to achieve the polio-free status with concerted efforts and an emergency preparedness and response plan

Black money: India backs convention

• India has ratified an international convention on taxation which will help the country in bringing back illegal funds stashed abroad
• India became the 13th country and the first non-OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) nation to ratify the ‘Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters,' which seeks to promote transparency and exchange of tax-related information.
• The Convention, a Ministry release said, “also provides for assistance in the recovery of taxes. This will give a fillip to the efforts of the government in bringing the Indian money illegally stashed abroad.”
• It will also allow India to seek past information in criminal tax matters.
• “A party to the Convention is compulsorily required to exchange the past information in criminal matters for at least three years ...” the release said.
• The convention, it said, explicitly provided for automatic and spontaneous exchange of information and would permit tax officials to enter the territory of the other country to examine individuals and records.

Google glasses to stream info directly to eyes: report

• It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel. Search engine giant Google is developing a pair of electronic glasses that can stream information directly to the user’s eyes in real time.
• The glasses, to be launched by the end of the year, will be more like smartphones with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.
• Loaded with a low-resolution, built-in camera, the Google glasses “will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information about locations, surrounding buildings and friends who might be nearby,” a New York Times report said.
• The glasses will be integrated with other Google products, like Google Latitude to share location, Google Maps to search for nearby places and Google Goggles to search images and identify what is being looked at.
• For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. The glasses might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.
• The glasses, will be Android based, and will include a display that will sit inches from the wearer’s eye, streaming real-time info about his surroundings, similar to the various augmented reality applications seen on smartphones.
• The data will be fetched through a 3G/4G data connection, and the glasses will retrieve information about their surroundings through GPS and several sensors.

Bagram incident

• According to reports copies of the Koran were “inadvertently” incinerated at Bagram airbase after alleged suspicions that “Taliban prisoners were using the books to pass messages to each other."
• United States of America apologised for the same to Afghan People

Farmer friendly MGNREGS from April 1

• Even while turning down demands for a moratorium on MGNREGS jobs during the agricultural season, the Centre on Wednesday approved new works that aim at boosting the farm sector.
• The new avatar of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, coming into existence on April 1, will allow farmers who qualify for support under MGNREGS to hire hands for eight man-days per acre for transplantation and for another four man-days at two intervals for weeding.
• Through this provision the Centre seeks to solve the problem of small and marginal farmers who not only find it difficult to get hands but also pay higher wages demanded by workers. They are unable to match the wages paid under MGNREGS. Now the government will pay for those working on agricultural land owned by eligible farmers.
• In another development, to safeguard the interests of manual labour, receipt of application has been made mandatory and inability to provide job would automatically generate an unemployment allowance under the electronic system to be managed by the States. Refusal by authorities to accept application for jobs has been made punishable

Iran stops oil sales to British and French firms

• Iran has stopped selling crude to British and French companies, the oil ministry said on Sunday, in a retaliatory measure against fresh EU sanctions on the Islamic state's lifeblood, oil.
• The European Union in January decided to stop importing crude from Iran from July 1 over its disputed nuclear program, which the West says is aimed at building bombs. Iran denies this. 
• EU's new sanctions includes a range of extra restrictions on Iran that went well beyond U.N. sanctions agreed last month and included a ban on dealing with Iranian banks and insurance companies and steps to prevent investment in Tehran's lucrative oil and gas sector, including refining.
• The mounting sanctions are aimed at putting financial pressure on the world's fifth largest crude oil exporter, which has little refining capacity and has to import about 40 percent of its gasoline needs for its domestic consumption.

Kamal Bawa gets first Gunnerus award for sustainability

• The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters (DKNVS) will bestow the Gunnerus Sustainability Award — the world's first major international award for work on sustainability — on India-born Dr. Kamal Bawa, Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. 
• He will receive the Gunnerus Gold Medal and the award of 1 million Norwegian Kronor (about $190,000).
• Dr. Bawa is most noted for, among other works, his pioneering research on population biology in rainforest areas. His wide span of work includes groundbreaking biological discoveries made in Central America and in the Western Ghats and the Himalayas in India. 
• He is specially noted for the establishment, and as president, of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) in Bangalore. Until recently, he also held the Ruffolo Giorgio Fellowship in Sustainability Science and Bullard Fellowship at the Harvard University.

• The Gunnerus award is the first major international prize for outstanding scientific work that promotes sustainable development globally, and will be awarded every two years starting in 2012, a press release said. The award is named after DKNVS’ founder, Bishop Johan Ernst Gunnerus (1718-1773), and is the result of a collaboration between DKNVS, Sparebank1 SMN and the society Technoport. DKNVS has been responsible for the international launch, and the selection of the winner

Kathakali

• Kathakali is a highly stylized classical India dance-drama from the state of Kerala.
•  It is known for its elaborate make-up and costumes, detailed gestures and well-defined body movements. 
• It is usually a group presentation where dancers assume roles from either the Ramayana or Mahabharata. 
• This dance form dates back to the 17th century and shares similarities with some older forms prevalent in Kerala then such as Krishnanattam, Koodiyattam and Ashtapadiyattam. 
• The present day dance form has developed over the years and today, the International Centre for Kathakali, New Delhi is busy modernizing, popularizing and propagating it. 
• The dance is performed by only men. A traditional performance begins in the evening and continues through the night, ending at dawn, when good overcome evil.

Mohiniyattam (Mohiniattam)

• Mohiniyattam (Mohiniattam) from Kerala in south India derives its name from two words, ‘mohini’, meaning enchantress and ‘attam’, graceful dance. 
• So it basically means the dance of the enchantress and hence, is performed only by women. 
• Mythology has it that once Lord Vishnu disguised as Mohini to lure the asuras (demons) away from amrit (nectar of immortality) which surfaced during the churning of the ocean. 
• In another story, Lord Vishnu appeared as Mohini to save Lord Shiva from the demon Bhamasura. 
• While mention of the dance can be found in ancient texts, Mohiniattam got a new lease of life in 19th century in the court of the enlightened ruler of Travancore, Swathi Thirunal. He promoted the study of the dance and composed many musical arrangements as a background for the dancers. 
• Malayalam poet Vallathol, who set up Kerala Kalamandalam in 1930, also played an important role in reviving the dance form.

Manipuri dance

• What we know today of Manipuri dance, one of many classical Indian dances, is thanks to Rabindranath Tagore. 
• In 1919, when he saw a performance of this dance in Sylhet (Bangladesh), he was so impressed that he invited the well-known exponent Guru Budhimantra Singh to Shantiniketan. 
• Later many other gurus came to teach this dance to Tagore’s students and also help him in choreographing many of his dance dramas.
•  Tagore made great efforts to bring the dance out of its place of origin, Manipur, in northeast India. 
• The cult of Radha and Krishna, particularly the ‘raslila’, is central to the theme of the dance. Unlike other classical dances, Manipuri dancers don’t wear ‘ghungroos’ or strike hard on the ground. 
• The movements are subtle and graceful. However, in the masculine tandava mode, the male dancer pirouettes in spirals in space or on knees on the ground.

FATF Approved the Revised Recommendations for Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism

• The Plenary Meeting of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) being held in Paris approved the revised recommendations for combating money laundering and financing of terrorism. The plenary also discussed the fourth follow-up report on India’s progress with reference to the Action Plan that it had committed to in June 2010. 
• The plenary appreciated the actions taken by India and the commitment of India to the international Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) standards.
• The FATF is an inter-governmental body that sets international standards for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. India became a member of FATF in June 2010.

Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System launched

http://pgportal.gov.in/cpgoffice

-Each Ministry/Department has designated an officer of the level of JS as Nodal Director of Grievances for redress and monitoring of public grievances, within a stipulated maximum time limit of two months, as per the policy guidelines.
- On-line receipt of grievances, their scrutiny and uploading of action taken reports.
- The system sends e-mail alerts to the citizens and the Public Grievance Officers.
- On lodging of grievance a registration number is communicated to the complainant to keep track and to view the progressive status/final reply of the grievance.
-Registration of grievances received manually/by post after scanning and online forwarding to the Ministries/Departments of GOI and their subordinate offices concerned for redress.
- Intimation of action taken to complainants and uploading of action taken reports, which can also be viewed by the complainants online.

Air India loses exclusive rights over international flights

• Air India would no longer enjoy exclusive privilege over all bilateral air traffic rights with foreign countries as the government has decided to allow all Indian carriers to use these rights.
• As Air India had since inception continued to enjoy exclusive right (right of first refusal) over foreign routes due to its historic monopoly over foreign routes, private airlines could operate only when the national carrier said it would not operate on them.As a result, several routes and flying slots remained unutilised.
• The civil aviation ministry has now decided to allow all scheduled Indian carriers, including Air India, to utilise allocated bilaterals till they reach the maximum permissible limit under air service agreements (ASAs) with various countries
• The ASAs fix the maximum number of flights or seats to be operated by designated carriers of both countries each week.
• In Europe, Indian carriers use less than 10 per cent of the allowed capacity, leaving up to 90 per cent of the market share to foreign carriers. Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher fly to France and Germany and no one flies to Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden or Switzerland.

UN backs resolution condemning Syrian regime

• The United Nations General Assembly has approved an Arab-sponsored resolution condemning violence by the Syrian government. 
• The non-binding resolution also calls for President Assad to relinquish power. Russia and China were amongst those who voted against the resolution just as they did with a similar Security Council resolution two weeks ago.

Nice Article on national water policy

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2897312.ece

Ahmadinejad unveils nuclear projects

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated three new nuclear projects, in a ceremony that was broadcast live on state television network IRIB.
• At the Iranian Atomic Organisation in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad witnessed the insertion of Iran’s first home-made nuclear fuel rods into a medical reactor.
• The President then opened, via a video-conference link-up, two other projects in the Natanz plant in central Iran.
• The plant there will now be able to enrich uranium to 20 per cent and will also use of a new type of centrifuge, capable of a far higher enrichment speed than previous models.
• The IRIB report did not mention the opening of the new enrichment site of Fordo in Qom province, which had been expected to be among the projects opened by the President.
• The Tehran reactor was established in 1967 and equipped with a 5-megawatt pool-type. The fuel for this reactor was initially provided by Argentina, but this stopped a few years ago.
• The fuel for was then supposed to be provided by Russia and France but a deal struck in October 2009 failed, and Iran began making the fuel itself, by first enriching uranium to 20 per cent and then turning it into fuel rods.
• Enriched uranium is a critical component for both civil nuclear power generation and atomic weapons.
• The new projects showed that Iran would not be intimidated by international threats over its nuclear programme, and would continue with its technological advances, ISNA news agency commented.

Syrian referendum on single-party rule

• Syria's President has decreed to hold a referendum later this month for a new Constitution that would effectively end nearly 50 years of single party rule
• Under the new charter, freedom is “a sacred right” and “the people will govern the people” in a multi-party democratic system based on Islamic law, state television reported.
• The proposed Constitution does away with Article 8 of the old charter which declared the Baath party, in power since 1963, as the “leader of the state and society”

National Telecom Policy 2011

• Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal announced major contours on spectrum management and licensing framework, which includes allowing operators to hold more spectrum, liberalising mergers and acquisitions, and a uniform licence fee regime.
• To be a major component of the proposed National Telecom Policy 2011, the new guidelines say all future licences will be ‘Unified Licences' that will be delinked from spectrum allocation, while all existing telecom licences will be migrated to the new regime.
• Mr. Sibal also said the prescribed limit on spectrum assigned to a service provider will be 2x8 MHz (paired spectrum) for GSM technology for all service areas other than Delhi and Mumbai where it will be 2x10 MHz (paired spectrum). The current prescribed limit is 2x6.2 MHz of GSM spectrum as per licence norms.
• Referring to merger and acquisitions, Mr. Sibal said the new regime would allow up to 35 per cent market share for the merged entity, while the government would the TRAI recommendation to consider market share up to 60 per cent. The new policy will allow spectrum sharing between operators in the same circle, while spectrum will not be permitted among licensees having 3G spectrum. Mr. Sibal also clarified that spectrum trading would not be allowed in India.

MGNREGS faces grant cut

• The Congress' flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, is facing a big cut in its budgetary grant for the first time since its launch in 2006.
• The budgetary support for the current financial year was a tad lower at Rs. 40,000 crore but the progress of the MGNREGS has been so bad that the UPA government is now set to slash the allocation for the job scheme for the poor for the 2012-13 financial year by 10 to 20 per cent.
• Mr. Ramesh is aiming for a higher allocation for improving drinking water facilities and setting up toilets for better hygiene and cleanliness. If his proposal gets the nod, the budgetary allocation for ministries under his control will exceed Rs. 90,000 crore.
• But in any case, the allocation for the MGNREGS is likely to be cut by Rs. 4000 crore-Rs. 8000 crore.
• How poor the progress of the scheme has been during the current financial year could be gauged from the fact that the States spent only Rs. 20,866 crore, out of Rs. 22,251 crore released by the Centre, on providing jobs and creating assets till December-end.

PIIGS countries

PIGS is a pejorative acronym used to refer to the economies of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. Since 2008, the term has included Ireland, either in place of Italy or with an additional I.

RBI realigns Bank Rate with MSF

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to increase the Bank Rate by 350 basis points from 6 per cent to 9.50 per cent per annum with immediate effect.
• The RBI said that it realigned the Bank Rate with Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) rate, which, in turn, is linked to the policy repo rate.
• Henceforth, whenever there is an adjustment of the MSF rate, the Reserve Bank will consider and align the Bank Rate with the revised MSF rate.
• Moreover, under the revised operating procedure, MSF, instituted at 100 basis points above the policy repo rate, has been in operation, which more or less served the purpose of the Bank Rate. At present, the repo rate is 8.50 per cent, reserve repo 7.50 per cent and MSF 9.50 per cent. 
• Repo rate is the rate at which banks borrow funds from the central bank and reverse repo rate is the rate at which banks park their funds with the central bank. 
• Under the MSF, banks are permitted to avail themselves of funds from the RBI on overnight basis.
• The Bank Rate acts as the penal rate charged on banks for shortfalls in meeting their reserve requirements (cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio). The Bank Rate is also used by several other organisations as a reference rate for indexation purposes.

What is the marginal standing facility?

The Reserve Bank of India in its monetary policy for 2011-12, introduced the marginal standing facility (MSF), under which banks could borrow funds from RBI at 8.25%, which is 1% above the liquidity adjustment facility-repo rate against pledging government securities.


The MSF rate is pegged 100 basis points or a percentage point above the repo rate. Banks can borrow funds through MSF when there is a considerable shortfall of liquidity. This measure has been introduced by RBI to regulate short-term asset liability mismatches more effectively.

In the annual policy statement, RBI says: "The stance of monetary policy is, among other things, to manage liquidity to ensure that it remains broadly in balance, with neither a large surplus diluting monetary transmission nor a large deficit choking off fund flows."

What is the difference between liquidity adjustment facility-repo rate and marginal standing facility rate?

Banks can borrow from the Reserve Bank of India under LAF-repo rate, which stands at 7.25%, by pledging government securities over and above the statutory liquidity requirement of 24%. Though in case of borrowing from the marginal standing facility, banks can borrow funds up to one percentage of their net demand and time liabilities, at 8.25%. However, it can be within the statutory liquidity ratio of 24%.

Kuchipudi

• Kuchipudi is the name of a classical Indian dance and a small village in Andhra Pradesh, where this dance originated. 
• Known for its graceful movements and strong narrative, Kuchipudi was historically performed as a dance drama with several dancers taking different roles. 
• Today, it is performed either solo or as a group presentation. Legend has it that a devotee of Lord Vishnu, Siddhendra yogi, once dreamt of Krishna and his consorts, Rukmini and Satyabhama. Later, he searched for dancers to enact the dream and he found them in the village Kuchelapuram, which was later called Kuchipudi. 
• Since then every family of the village ritually offers at least one male member to be trained as an actor-dancer.

Kathak

• Kathak originated from Uttar Pradesh and traces its origins to the nomadic bards of ancient India who were called ‘kathaks’, Sanskrit for storytellers. 
• The dance form has traces of temple and ritual dances and later in the 16th century even borrowed from Persian and Central Asian dances. 
• The Bhakti movement, too, majorly influenced the dance when it was used to tell stories of Radha and Krishna and childhood exploits of Krishna. 
• Dancers usually belong to one of the three ‘gharanas’ – Benaras, Jaipur and Lucknow. The Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah, was a great patron of dance and during his reign, the form developed prominently. 
• The world came to know of this dance form in the 20th century through Kalka Prasad Maharaj. His sons further developed the form. Some famous dancers are Birju Maharaj, Sitara Devi, Shovana Narayan, Uma Sharma and Kumudini Lakhiya.

snarky

1. Rudely sarcastic or disrespectful; snide.
2. Irritable or short-tempered; irascible.

 

Every time I think I'm getting used the Brits they go do something that's so typical that I can't resist being snarky. This time, they've whipped up a ridiculous palaver over the Dassault-Eurofighter deal, with random MPs and right-wing press complaining about why Britain gives $280 million in aid to India if we're giving our multi-billion defence contracts to the French 

NASA eyes plan for deep-space outpost near the moon, EML-2

 

• NASA is pressing forward on assessing the value of a "human-tended waypoint" near the far side of the moon — one that would embrace international partnerships as well as commercial and academic participation
• A team is being formed to develop a cohesive plan for exploring a spot in space known as the Earth-moon libration point 2 (EML-2). 
• Libration points, also known as Lagrangian points, are places in space where the combined gravitational pull of two large masses roughly balance each other out, allowing spacecraft to essentially "park" there.
• EML-2 could serve as a gateway for capability-driven exploration of multiple destinations, such as near-lunar space, asteroids, the moon, the moons of Mars and, ultimately, Mars itself, according to NASA officials.
• An EML-2 waypoint could enable significant telerobotic science on the far side of the moon and could serve as a platform for solar and Earth scientific observation, radio astronomy and other science in the quiet zone behind the moon.