Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 16 January 2017

:: National ::

Jallikattu conducted despite SC ban

Defying the Supreme Court’s ban and overcoming heavy police presence, supporters of jallikattu managed to conduct the bull-taming sport in various parts of Tamil Nadu, including Madurai, Tiruchi and Karur, on Mattu Pongal day.
Six bulls were let loose in the arena in Palamedu, one of the places famous for the sport in Madurai, where it is traditionally held a day after Pongal.
A large number of people, predominantly locals, and small groups of young participants from nearby regions, began gathering near the arena since Sunday morning.
Black flags had been hoisted across the village and shops were shut as a mark of protest. The people who gathered raised slogans condemning the ban on the sport and terming it as an attack on Tamil culture.
Though a huge posse of police was deployed, with police personnel escorting each of the six bulls, the animals were let loose, one after the other by the locals.

Indian bacteria resistant to all available antibiotics

A woman in the U.S. died after being infected by a superbug during her visit to India, say doctors who found that the “nightmare” bacteria was resistant to all available antibiotics.
The infection was caused by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a multidrug-resistant organism associated with high mortality.
While CRE are not new to the U.S., what was new in this case is that the infection was resistant or non-susceptible to all available antimicrobial drugs, researchers said.
The 70-year-old patient was admitted to an acute care hospital last year after an extended trip to India. The infection was serious; none of the 14 antibiotics physicians used to treat the woman worked.
That testing confirmed the presence of New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-1), an enzyme that directly breaks down carbapenems, a powerful class of antibiotics that are often used to treat multidrug-resistant infections.
The U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s antimicrobial testing showed the isolate was resistant to 26 different antibiotics.

Tribal population in Tripura protest for indigenous population issue

Major tribal political parties in Tripura have formed a coalition apparently with an eye on the Assembly elections due in 2018.
The Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) and the Nationalist Council of Tripura (NCT), announced they would campaign on issues of 33 per cent indigenous population of the State.
The three parties have called a general strike in areas under the Tribal Autonomous District Council on February 8 to protest the new citizenship policy of the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre.

:: International ::

China has handed over two ships to the Pakistan Navy

China has handed over two ships to the Pakistan Navy to safeguard the strategic Gwadar port and trade routes under the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a move likely to raise alarm in India.
China handed over the two ships to the Pakistan Navy joint security along the sea route of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The ships — named after two rivers Hingol and Basol near Gwadar — were received by Commander of the Pakistan Fleet Vice Admiral Arifullah Hussaini.

:: India and World ::

Growing Japan and India relationship

Japan and India have had a long trade and economic relationship starting from the later part of the 19th century.
However, post World War II and the establishment of diplomatic relations, the imperatives of the cold war kept the relations between the two countries at a sub-optimal level.
In the late 1980s, with the cold war fading, Japan-India relations again looked promising.
It is worth noting that even during the cold war period, Japan’s Overseas Development Assistance(ODA) was still active in India.
India’s nuclear tests in 1998 again led to severe condemnation and harsh sanctions by Japan and the relations moved to a low keel.
The current NDA government’s focused efforts in this regard seem to stem from awareness of the fact that the economic value created by way of trade and investment between the two countries is significantly lower than the potential.
The annual outward flow of Japanese FDI is about $130 billion and the U.S. gets about $40 billion annually. India should target at least $25 billion annually for the next 10 years.
The two-way trade in 1994-1995 between Japan and India was $4067 million, between India and China was $1015 million and between India and South Korea was $961.9 million.
By 2015-16, Japan-India two-way trade had increased to $14,512 million (a cumulative annual growth rate of 6.3%), China-India two-way trade had grown to $70,758 million (CAGR of 22.6%).
There are three main challenges which have constrained the Japan-India partnership from achieving its full potential. First, India’s complex regulations, red tape, ad hoc nature of state-level interventions.
Second, Japanese companies face considerable logistics challenges and non-availability of uninterrupted power supply constrains their manufacturing plans in India.
Third, while India can emerge as a large market for Japanese infrastructure system exports, there have been incredible delays in the commencement of the projects.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has funded the Tamil Nadu Investment Promotion Program for strengthening policy framework and urban and industry infrastructure to facilitate foreign investment.
Japan is working on developing 12 Industrial townships called Japan Industrial Townships (JITs) which will operate like Little Japan with all the infrastructure to support the operations of Japanese companies.
The Tokyo Declaration of November 2014 sets a target for doubling Japan’s foreign direct investment, the number of Japanese companies operating in India and an ambitious investment target of JPY 3.5 trillion within a five-year period.
The cumulative Overseas Development Assistance disbursement by Japan (India is the largest recipient of Japanese ODA) in 2014 was JPY4.6 trillion and in FY 15-16 only JPY 185.6 billion was disbursed.
Given the under-performance on all the benchmarks set up under the Tokyo Declaration, timely intervention from the highest levels of both governments can still ensure that the ambitious metrics can be achieved.

:: Business and Economy ::

SEBI tightened norms for merger of an unlisted company with a listed entity

In a bid to safeguard the interests of the public shareholders, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has tightened the norms for merger of an unlisted company with a listed entity.
SEBI decided that the holding of public shareholders post the merger cannot be less than 25%. Further, the watchdog has stipulated a similar threshold for institutional shareholders of the unlisted entity as well, post-merger.
The regulator has also decided that an unlisted company can be merged with a listed company only if the latter is listed on a stock exchange having nationwide trading terminals.
To ensure larger say for the public shareholders, the regulator has also made their e-voting mandatory in cases wherein the stake of such shareholders reduces by more than 5% in the merged entity.
Among other issues, the regulator also reduced the broker fees by 25% from Rs. 20 per crore of turnover to Rs. 15 crore.
This will result in reduction of overall cost of transactions and will benefit the investors and promote the development of securities market, according to the statement.
SEBI has decided that fund houses will have to include in their advertisements, the performance of the scheme in terms of CAGR for the past one year, three years and five years and since inception.
The regulator has also allowed mutual funds to invest in hybrid instruments like REITs and InvITs but has laid down certain criteria on the cap for such investments.
A mutual fund scheme cannot invest more than 5% of its net asset value (NAV) in units of a single REITs/InvITs issuer. Further, the overall exposure of a scheme in REITs/InvITs has been capped at 10%.
However, such limits will not be applicable for investments in case of index fund or sector or industry specific scheme pertaining to REITs and InvITs.

Competition Appellate Tribunal says centre and business should fight abuses

The consent of all stakeholders is needed to implement norms, right up to the municipal level, against abuse of market power and other illegal practices restricting free trade and competition, said Competition Appellate Tribunal.
Technology had been contributing a lot to the evolution of competition reforms.
If the spirit of innovation is not thwarted, technology — which had been touching all walks of life — can help mainstream competition up to the municipal level.
The term ‘competition policy’ refers to norms preventing restrictive trade practices and abuse of market dominance. Even municipal institutions are grappling with the problem of cartelisation and such anti-competitive practices.
Disturbing an existing configuration overnight can become a problem and the governments are usually reluctant to take up multi-disciplinary policy-making like in the field of competition policy.

Microfinance industry facing heat of demonetisation

The ongoing repercussions of the government’s decision to demonetise high-value currency notes are being felt in particular by cash-intensive sectors such as the microfinance industry.
The reason for this is that cash-intensive industries across the north of India are now struggling to remain afloat.
However, various rules regarding the withdrawal of cash from banks post demonetisation have even hit the company’s ability to disburse loans to these women entrepreneurs.
To some people the move towards digital payments remains a distant dream, completely impractical for the reality of the situation in rural India at the moment.