Development Definition,Black Money in Real Estate,Lacunae in Planning Commission,Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses

1. Ques. What is Development?

Ans.  According to Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize winning economist who was also the Chairman of the U.S President Bill Clinton’s Economic Advisory Council defined that development will enhance and improve the below 4 factors in any country. 

A. Material Goods Capital

B. Social Capital like social harmony and mutual trust.

C. Natural resources capital such as soil, fish, forests, water, trees etc.

D. Human capital such as education health, technical skills employment etc.

2. Problem of Black Money Circulation in Real Estate Sector - 

The real estate sector has more black money in circulation in it when compared to the amount stashed abroad. Real estate elite claim that they will convert black money of people to white and are willing to take cash payments even in primary sector. To deter black money flow in primary sector market the Government made mandatory for all buyers to mention their permanent account number in all transactions but buyers countered this check practice by using multiple PAN numbers so now Government is trying to link transaction with Aadhaar which is the unique identity number.

In the secondary market the gap between market price and circle rate should be properly regularized as high market price can lead to tax undercutting and low market price can lead to reduced transaction as the gap now will be considered as residual earning which is taxable.

3. Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses

Of the 3 countries that voted against the adoption of 1997 UN convention on the law of the Non navigational uses of International Watercourses by UN General  Assembly  China was the one.  On 23rd November 2014 first unit of Zangmu Hydropower Complex became operational. It is located on the flow of Yarlung Tsangpo or Brahmaputra.

As China falls in up stream flow of the river so it does not likes engaging in multilateral agreements involving transboundary rivers -

4. Some lacunae in Planning Commission 

(1) One day meeting of National development Council was not efficient enough to analyse the decisions of Planning commission. 

(2) The establishment of (PAMD) Project Management and Appraisal Division in 1972 whose job was to look into proposals and give approval to all those  projects whose worth exceeded Rs 50 crores. This sometimes led to delay in project finalising which jeopardized the basis premise of the existence of Planning commission

(3) The power without accountability of planning commission earned it the wrath of many genuine stakeholders which were suffering due to its(Planning Commission's) slack performance.

5. NASA probe was launched by the NASA in January 2006 to study Pluto and its moon named Charon and several others moons. 18 times it has gone in hibernation and worked up successfully all time.

6. ISRO’s largest ever communication satellite with 48 transponders, GSAT-16 was launched from Arianespace rocket from Kourou in French Guiana.

It has 24C-band, 12 Ku-band and 12 Upper Extended C-band transponders that will be useful for internet, radio and telephone services. ISRO currently has 188 active transponders on INSAT but they are not enough to handle traffic of services as the traffic is very high so 95 transponders on foreign satellites have been leased by Indian Space Research Organization to meet the increasing demand.

GSAT 16 was launched on 7th December 2014 and the launch date has been preponed by around 6 months because there was immense pressure on ISRO to augment transponders to handle increased demand of handling high traffic.