India stance on Palestine,FDI in Medical Devices,Know Your Customer Norms,Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya,Global Action Plan

1. History of Indian stance on Palestine –

1947-India at the United Nations voted against the partition of Palestine In  1947 India became for the first time the first country other than Arab countries who favoured and recognized Palestine Liberation Organization as the legitimate and sole representative of the people of Palestine. In 1988, India for the first time became one the first countries to recognize Palestine as a separate country. India in 1996 opened its office of representation in Gaza. In 1999 India was one country to sponsor drafting of resolution for Palestinian people for their right of self determination. In 2003 when the issue of building of separation wall came up in the United Nations India voted against it. In 2011 India voted in favour of admitting Palestine as a full member country of UNESCO. In 2012 in the voting on whether Palestine should be made a non member observer country of the United Nations, India voted in favour of Palestine. In the latest development of 2014 India supported the resolution of UNHRC to probe the launch of Israel’s offensive attack in the Gaza strip.

Now foreign policy pundits are saying that in near future India is going to change its stance towards Palestine from support to neutral. 

2. 100% FDI has been allowed in medical devices sector through the automatic route. Investment coming through automatic route implies that no permission is required from Foreign Investment Promotion Board to acquire an emitting company in the sector or to set up a new medical device manufacturing unit.

3. Rajasthan Govt. has imposed educational qualification criteria before Panchayat polls – By the Rajasthan Panchayat Raj Second Amendment Ordinance of 2014 which was recently promulgated by the Governor which sets minimum educational criteria for zila Parishad or panchayat samiti polls and also for the post of Sarpanch.

For Sarpanch the candidate should be class VIIth pass and for Zila Parishad he should be class 10th pass. This has brought in sharp criticism from the people. As the literacy levels of Rajasthan according to the Census of 2011 is 66% against the national literacy level of 74%. In Rajasthan the literacy level in rural areas are very very low. This fact will be exacerbated by the stat that in Census the word “literary” means ability to read and write with understanding and in view of the educational qualification above the number of representative eligible for contesting election will be drastically reduced.

4. Some facts about Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya –

(a) President of Indian National Congress for 4 times (1909-10, 1913, 1919, 1932)

(b) Founded Banaras Hindu University in 1915-16

(c) Got Bharat Ratna on 24th December 2014

(d) Was a delegate in the first Round Table conference of 1930 and was an active and important leader of Non Cooperation Movement.

(e) He was not in favour of Congress support to the Khilafat movement and was very much against the principle of separate electorate for different community.

5. Global Action Plan by UNICEF and WHO combined was launched in April 2013 to reduce diarrhea deaths to less than 1 per 1000 live births and pneumonia deaths to less than 3 per 1000 live births. In India this action plan is likely to be launched next month. Here of all the child death below 5, 36% occur due to diarrhea and pneumonia. In India the under 5 mortality rate is 62 per 1000 live births. The program will be launched in 4 states Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. 7 states of India have achieved the MDG target of UMR of 38 per 1000 live births.

Some steps taken by India to reduce child and Maternal Mortality Rate –

(a) Reproductive Maternal Neonatal Child Health plus Adolescent programme.

(b) India Newborn Action Plan.

(c) National Rural Health Mission.

6. In new Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects Govt. said that renegotiation clause would be there but it would not be in old PPP projects as it would be against the law. It has been done to revive investments in infrastructure projects and by contract renegotiation will try to ease the pressure on the balance sheets of banks. It is also been said that a mechanism would be evolved that would check the unrealistic bidding done by companies to acquire projects.

7. Some facts about KYC –

Recently the KYC norms were simplified by Reserve Bank of India saying that a single document will be enough as a proof of identity and address but banks counter argument is that when any transaction takes place then they demand additional documents are they are fearful of something fishy going on. Banks are also facing problems while probing transactions and checking KYC credentials, as a single customer can have accounts in multiple banks and many account have more than 1 holder. So banks are iterating that in view of these challenges banks need to have a very strong software technology programme who can cater to all these needs. Improving verification power of banks can be a better alternative than the prevalent administration, so this needs to be reformed first.