Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 21 December 2016

:: National ::

Manipur faces tension after violence

The Centre has rushed around 4,000 para-military personnel to Manipur in the wake of violence following the economic blockade of the National Highways connecting the State.
While around 1,500 para-military personnel were moved to Manipur in the last two days, around 2,500 were dispatched last week.
The decision was taken in the wake of violence following the economic blockade imposed by the United Naga Council since November 1 on two National Highways — NH-2 (Imphal-Dimapur) and NH 37 (Imphal-Jiribam).
These highways serve as lifelines for the landlocked Manipur .
Nagaland CM claimed that they were being prevented from proceeding to their villages in the hills. Some valley-based organisa-tions were threatening them, he alleged.
Earlier, the Cabinet approved the payment of Rs 20 lakh to the families of the three policemen killed during an ambush by hill-based militants on December 15.
The Cabinet also approved to bear the cost of treatment of 14 policemen who were injured in attacks in Lokchao and Bongyang in the newly created Tengnoupal and Noney districts.
The Naga Students Federation, meanwhile, has decided to impose a “total blockade” on all Manipur-bound vehicles, including passenger and goods carriers, in the Naga-inhabited areas till the Manipur government gave an assurance to the Nagas about their safety in the State.

Maharashtra is going all out to become cashless

Maharashtra is going all out with its plan to help rural areas go cashless. The State government will train people in 30,000 villages to use credit, debit cards and mobile wallets over the next three months.
The State will set up ‘DigitalSewaKendras' in each of these village gram panchayats and install 11,000 Point of Sale (PoS) machines for transactions.
An army of 10,00,000 volunteers will fan out to teach villagers five different modes of digital payments
The move is part of the Digital Maharashtra plan approved along with the Aadhaar Bill in the winter session of the Assembly in Nagpur.
The volunteers will train villagers in Aadhaar-enabled payment systems (AEPS), use of debit/credit cards, Unified Payment Interface (UPI), USSD-based mobilebanking (on basic mobile phones), and mobile wallets.
The digital plan is being implemented against the backdrop of 93 per cent tele-phone density, completion of 73 per cent Aadhaar seeding, use of 1.60 crore Jan Dhan ac-counts and 1.23 crore Rupay cards in the state.

IT raids since demonetisation have found large amounts

Over Rs. 3,185 crore of undisclosed income has been detected while Rs. 86 crore worth new notes have been seized by Income- Tax department as part of its country-wide operations against black money hoarders after the demonetisation.
IT had carried out a total of 677 search, survey and enquiry operations under the provisions of the In-come- Tax Act since the note ban, even as the department has issued over 3,100 notices to various entities.
The department, they said, has seized cash and jewellery worth over Rs. 428 crore during the same period even as the new currencyseized (largely in Rs. 2,000 notes) is valued at about Rs. 86 crore.
The agency has also referred over 220 cases to its sister agencies like the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to probe other financial crimes like moneylaundering, disproportion-ate assets and corruption as part of their legal mandate.
Meanwhile, the headquarters of these probe agencies have issued orders to all their field formations to deposit the new currency, being seized by their officials in operations, in bank accounts rather than keeping it in strong rooms.
The I-T department has also asked its field formations to coordinate with local police, also making huge cash and jewellery seizures, to understand the complete modus operandi of black money generation post demonetisation.

:: Science and Technology ::

Nirbhaya and canister mounted Agni V to be launched

If weather permits, two important missile launches are to take place this month. India's long-range, sub-sonic cruise missile, Nirbhay, will lift of from the Launch Complex-III of the IntegratedTest Range, Balasore, Odisha.
The redoubtable Agni-V, which can carry nuclear war-heads over a distance of about 5,000 km, will be fired from a canister mounted on a massive truck from Wheeler Island, of the Odisha coast, on December 26.
Nirbhay, which has a range of about 1,000 km, has blen-ded missile and aeronautical technologies into a single contraption. It will take of vertically like a missile.
Amechanism in its first stage will tilt it horizontally and the first stage with its booster engine will then fall of. The second stage with a turbo-jet engine will cruise horizontally like an aircraftat a subsonic speed of 0.7 Mach.
The missiles will be fired by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, which has conceived, de-signed and developed them.

:: India and World ::

India and Kyrgyzstan plans to act against terror

India and Kyrgyzstan finalised plans for joint military exercises in the New Y ear, and re-iterated the need for a global convention against terrorism.
Visiting President AlmazbekAtambaev high-lighted the common historical heritage, and sought cooperation to deal with current global challenges like terrorism.
Following a bilateral summit, the delegations finalised plans to hold the annual joint military exercises named “Khanjar-IV”. The “Khanjar-II” exercises were held in March 2015 in Kyrgyzstan and “Khanjar-III” in March-April 2016 in Gwalior.
A joint statement which marked the end of the visit took note of the IT sup-port that India had provided to the Kyrgyz military institutions, including building three IT centres in the past two years.
It also noted the high-altitude Kyrgyz-Indian Mountain Training Centre being built in the city of Balykchi, which will be used to train Indian military personnel.
The visiting delegation also welcomed India's proposal for training Kyrgyz forces for U.N. peacekeeping assignments.
Both sides reiterated the demand for global counter-terror norms to fight terror-ism in Asia, and called for the adoption by the United Nations of the draft Comprehensive Convention on Combating International Terrorism.

:: Business and Economy ::

Rural sector faces challenges post demonetisation

Rural sectors such as vegetable growers, brick kiln labourers, transport industry and plantations need special attention even though there is a perception about a positive impact of demonetisation.
Mr. Jaitley hinted at some more “out of the box” steps that the government would take to ease the adverse impact of demonetisation.
The bankers, during a pre-Budget consultative meeting with Mr. Jaitley, suggested special efforts for digitisation of primary agriculture cooperative societies, RRBs and co-operative banks to promote digital transactions and e-payments.
A team of economists also met Mr. Jaitley and said that Budget 2017 should include a statement by the govt detailing the costs incurred due to the demonetisation of high-value currency notes, such as the printing cost of new notes etc.
On the issue of cash that needed to be brought back into the economy in lieu of withdrawn currencies, they said that the market should be allowed to decide the quantum.

Credit costs hinder cashless economy

Re-serve Bank of India (RBI) is-sued a circular asking banks to waive charges levied on transactions by merchant establishments using point of sale (PoS) terminals.
Customer charges, in this case, are known as the Mer-chant Discount Rate (MDR) in banking parlance. Despite the circular, many banks, particularly the private sec-tor ones, had been reluctant to waive the charges.
How-ever, these banks started falling in line after Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das reiterated the same.
The move, however, benefited merchants but not the consumer. Merchants have not reduced their prices, even though they ended up not paying the charge.
MDR for debit cards has been capped by the banking regulator at 1 per cent pertransaction while for credit cards — where there is no cap — the rate could go up to 2.5 per cent.
The charge is borne by the merchant and goes to the is-suer bank (the bank that has issued the card), the acquirer banks (the bank that in-stalled the PoS terminal) and payment gateways such as Mastercard, Visa and Rupay.
The issuer bank gets the maximum share of the MDR. First, let us take the case of debit cards.
Debit cards are issued to customers who have a savings bank account and the money from that ac-count gets debited immediately after the card is swiped for a transaction.
When a depositor keeps the funds in the savings ac-count for which she earns 4 per cent, the bank, in turn, lends that money which can earn it at least 6.5 per cent, a risk-free rate.
Issuing a debit card to the customers saves cost for the bank. RBI studies have found that if a customer visits a bank branch for a transaction, the cost incurred by the bank is in the range of Rs.30-32, but when the customervisits automated teller ma-chines, the cost comes down to Rs.14-15 per transaction.
Banks earn by lending the deposits made by their customers. So such a charge to the merchants acts as a disincentive for them to install PoS terminals.
So far as credit cards are concerned, banks charge merchants a fee ranging from 1.5 per cent to as high as2.5 per cent.
In the case of credit card — which is a credit product — the charges should be borne only by the person who is availing the credit and not by any other party.
Following the demonetisation exercise, installation of PoS terminals has seen an exponential growth.
State Bank of India (SBI), for example, saw 3.75 lakh transactions everyday in the PoS terminals amounting to Rs.94 crore per day. After de-monetisation the number in-creased to 16.43 lakh transactions amounting to Rs.324 crore per day.
The Centre has asked the banks to beef up installation of PoS terminals and has given them an ambitious tar-get of installing 3 lakh terminals over three months, following the demonetisation.
RBI had recently lowered the MDR cap for debit cards from January 1 to 0.25 per cent for transactions up toRs.1,000 and 0.5 per cent for transactions between Rs.1,000 and Rs.2,000. This limit is applicable until March 31.
The country's cash to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio, which is among the highest in the world, was envisioned to be reduced from about 12 per cent to six per cent.