29th October Newspaper Notes - NDRF Nilofar Alert, Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana, Indian Vietnam Defence Collaboration, Soft Bank of Japan to Invest $10 billion in India

1. India will help Vietnam in modernizing its defence forces. Vietnam would be major partner of India in their combined effort to ensure global and regional stability and security.

2. Soft bank of Japan which had plans to invest $10 Billion in Indian market made its 1st phase of investment. It invested $ 627 million in SNAPDEAL and in partnership with other investors, invested around $ 210 million in Ola formerly Olacabs.

3. NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) has put around 3600 personnel on alert and deployed around 1200 personnels in Gujarat Coastal areas to deal with “Nilofar” Cyclonic storm.

4. A programme has been launched to check for the gross violation of the Right to Education Act of 2009. It has been reported that more than 10,000 schools are not complying with the provisions of the Act and this campaign will run from November 10th to March 31, 2015. March 31, 2015 is the deadline set for the complete implementation of RTI Act 2009.

5. Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana launched by Union Tribal Welfare Minister Jual Oram is order to improve the human development indicators and infrastructure facilities of tribal people. This scheme assigns Rs. 10 crore to every block which has a population percentage of more than 33 percent of tribal people. A Web portal would be launched to display the current prices updating real time of minor forest produce. For eg. Mahua seeds, tendu leaves, bamboo, lac, chironjee, honey, tamarind, myrobalan, gums and haranji. 

6. Annual gender survey of World Economic forum – Ranks India on gender equality in -

(1) Education (2) Health (3) Equal pay for equal work (4) Political Empowerment. 

In removing inequalities between genders India ranks at 114 number out of 142 countries.

(a) On health and survival rank is 142

(b) On Education rank is 126

(c) Economic participation and opportunity 134

(d) Political Empowerment – 15

Some facts – 

(a) India at 114th ranks lowest among BRICS nation.

(b) WEF report says that it would take around 81 years more to bring complete gender equality at work place. 

(c) In political empowerment of women, India’s rank is better than that of the U.S. and the U.K.

(d) India ranks 111 among those countries who have women in Parliament. 

(e) India ranks 107 among those countries who have women Ministers.

(f) Out of the 2325 billionaires of the World 286 are female according to Wealth X and UBS Billionaire census.