Daily News Compilation (HINDU) for 30th April (MCQs included)

The tasks ahead

Author questions the quality of contraction — in the CAD and in fiscal consolidation — that matters more than the numbers.

Last year the CAD at $88 billion, or 4.8 per cent of GDP, threatened macroeconomic stability. Policymakers seemed to have run out of ideas to, for instance, stem the sharp depreciation of the rupee. The government hopes to announce a dramatic reduction in the CAD to about $32 billion, or 1.7 per cent of GDP, when figures for March 2014 are announced. 

That the sharp fall in the CAD is due to an aggressive clampdown on gold imports, by far the largest component of imports, is well-known. The restrictions on gold imports cannot last indefinitely. There is already substantial evidence that a large part of the gold trade is shifting underground, a development that will have serious consequences for society at large. 

A part of the insatiable demand for gold can be moderated by developing easy-to-invest savings instruments that offer returns that beat inflation. Also, the claim of containing the deficit loses much of its gloss if one realises that the contraction is not due to the sustained rise in exports but due to a fall in non-oil imports. The latter is an unmistakable sign of a slowdown, something which is not quite comforting. 

On fiscal deficit, the Finance Minister has said that the self-imposed “red line” will not be breached and that the deficit will be contained within 4.6 per cent as budgeted for. 

On fiscal consolidation, it is known that expenditure including Plan expenditure has been compressed, and besides there have been some dodgy practices of pushing items of expenditure to the following year and taking credit for receipts which in the normal course are not available during the period under reference. The arguments for greater transparency in government finances are familiar, but need to be restated to place the macroeconomy in its proper perspective.

The road to safety

India’s roads have acquired a reputation, quite deservedly, of being the most dangerous in the world

• Annual toll of nearly 140,000 accident fatalities; 
• injuries are estimated to be 15 to 20 times the number of deaths. 
• In absolute numbers, more people die in road accidents in India than in any other country. 
• Avoidable death and disability seriously affect economic progress — by some estimates, 3 per cent of GDP is lost in a year due to the carnage.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court to appoint a three-member committee to suggest ways to prevent road accidents and ensure accountability offers some hope that a new government at the Centre will be compelled to address the issue as an emergency. It is not as if suggestions for improvements for enhanced safety have not been proposed earlier. The Sundar Committee constituted by the Centre called for an apex agency to be created to assess all aspects of road safety, and to address the lacuna in scientific accident investigation. Although the recommendation was made seven years ago, it has failed to take off.

Unsafe transport, including services operated by government agencies, are a major part of the problem. 

National Transport Development Policy Committee headed by Rakesh Mohan suggested that national, State and local-level institutions be set up, with responsibility to address the issue of safety. 

There is an urgent need to form these committees, and appoint professionals to them. They must be empowered to upgrade driver-licensing practices, road systems, public lighting and signage. Accident investigation, which remains a neglected area, requires a thorough overhaul, and CCTVs can help determine the cause of mishaps. Also, the neglect of the public district hospital network in most States, and the high cost of treatment at private hospitals affect access to good trauma care for accident victims. The right to life demands that the Central and State governments provide medical facilities at a proximate institution free of cost to all. 

Gyaan

Sundar Committee 

Committee was set up on the directions of the Committee on Infrastructure, headed by the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in November 2005, recognizing the need to contain burgeoning road accidents and fatalities in the country. 

The main recommendations of the Committee 

1. Creation of the National Road Safety & Traffic Management Board, an Apex body at national level to promote road safety and traffic management in the country to be constituted through an Act of the Parliament with members and experts drawn from the various fields including road engineering, automobile engineering, traffic laws, medical care, etc. 

The Committee has proposed that the Board would have regulatory as well as advisory functions.

• Regulatory functions: Board would set standards and designs for mechanically propelled vehicles and National Highways. 
• Advisory function: Board would advise Government on various road safety aspects and will promote road safety research, road user behavior strategies, lay guidelines for establishing medical care and rehabilitation, etc. 

Board would also have powers to issue directions with regard to corrective measures and conduct safety audits. 

2. setting up of the state level bodies namely State Road Safety Boards as the issue of road safety is required to be taken up vigorously at all-India level. The functions of the State Board would be 

• to aid and advise State Governments on matters relating to road safety & traffic management,
• coordinate road safety & traffic management functions with State level agencies, 
• specify minimum standards for design, construction and operation of roads other than National Highways, 
• providing minimum standards for establishing and operating trauma care facilities, 
• commission safety audits to monitor compliance with standards, 
• specify minimum standards for design and manufacture of vehicles other than mechanically propelled vehicles, 
• recommend measures for enquiry and redressal of complaints and grievance relating to road safety & traffic management, etc. 

3. To provide flow of funds, the Committee has suggested earmarking of 1% of total proceeds of cess on diesel and petrol for Road Safety Fund. Some part of the assistance to the State Board is proposed to be released on the basis of performance of the State in promoting the cause of road safety. 

4. Decriminalization of road accident, the Committee has observed that traffic accidents are registered as medico-legal cases and the private hospitals are reluctant to accept the road accident victim to avoid getting embroiled into medico-legal case. The problem is further aggravated due to the requirement that attending doctors have to spend considerable time in appearing in Courts/Tribunals when these cases come up for hearing. It has been suggested by the Committee that these road accidents should be de-linked from the criminal aspect. It has been suggested that it should be the primary duty of the attending doctor to provide medical aid to the victim without waiting for registration of case. 

Black money: 18 names disclosed

The Centre on Tuesday disclosed in the Supreme Court the names of 18 individuals who had stashed black money in LGT bank in Liechtenstein, as per the information furnished by the German government to India in 2009.

The list, however, did not contain how much each individual had deposited. This information was given to the court in a sealed cover.

Canberra gallery gives up claim on stolen idol

Gyaan

Nataraja, 

Sanskrit: “Lord of the Dance”

Hindu god Shiva in his form as the cosmic dancer, represented in metal or stone in most Shaiva temples of South India.

In the most common type of image, Shiva is shown with four arms and flying locks dancing on the figure of a dwarf, Apasmara (a symbol of human ignorance; apasmara means “forgetfulness,” or “heedlessness”). 

• Shiva’s back right hand holds the damaru (hourglass-shaped drum); 
• the front right hand is in the abhaya mudra (the “fear-not” gesture, made by holding the palm outward with fingers pointing up); 
• the back left hand carries Agni (fire) in a vessel or in the palm of the hand; and 
• the front left hand is held across his chest in the gajahasta (elephant-trunk) pose, with wrist limp and fingers pointed downward toward the uplifted left foot. 
• The locks of Shiva’s hair stand out in several strands interspersed with the figures of Ganga (the Ganges River personified as a goddess), flowers, a skull, and the crescent moon. 
• His figure is encircled by a ring of flames, the prabhamandala. 
• In classic Sanskrit treatises on dance, this form, the most common representation of Nataraja, is called the bhujamgatrasa (“trembling of the snake”).

The gestures of the dance represent Shiva’s five activities (pancakritya): 

1. creation (symbolized by the drum), 

2. protection (by the “fear-not” pose of the hand), 

3. destruction (by the fire),

4. embodiment (by the foot planted on the ground), 

5. and release (by the foot held aloft).

In the Nataraja sculpture, Shiva is shown as the source of all movement within the cosmos, represented by the arch of flames. The purpose of the dance is to release humans from illusion, and the place where it is said to have been performed, Chidambaram (an important Shaiva centre in South India), called the centre of the universe, is in reality within the heart. 

Ardhanarishvara, 

• Sanskrit: “Lord Who Is Half Woman”
• composite male-female figure of the Hindu god Shiva, together with his consort Parvati.

The symbolic intent of the figure according to most authorities is to signify that the male and female principles are inseparable. Some popular explanation, 

• Shiva-Purana- god Brahma created male beings and instructed them in turn to create others, but they were unable to do so. When Shiva appeared before him in an androgynous form, Brahma realized his omission and created females. 
• Yet another legend has it that the sage (rishi) Bhringi had vowed to worship only one deity and so failed to circumambulate and to prostrate himself before Parvati. Parvati tried to force him to do so by asking to be united with her lord, but the sage assumed the form of a beetle and continued to circumambulate only the male half, whereupon Parvati became reconciled and blessed Bhringi.

Polio, AIDS successes bigger than n-deal: Amartya Sen

On subsidy, particularly in the light of the Congress manifesto promising to retain only the absolutely necessary subsidies, Prof. Sen said: “There has to be an attempt to cut subsidies. But before that there has to be an understanding of where the subsidies really go. The government spends a little over one per cent of the GDP on food security and employment regeneration (MGNREGA) but spends more than twice that much on subsidising electricity, cooking gas and other petroleum products, including diesel for luxury cars as well as fertilizer subsidies, which go primarily to rich farmers.”

Underscoring the fact that air-conditioning in five-star hotels was also subsidised, he said: “If you read the newspapers, you don’t get this impression. People talk about massive fiscal irresponsibility when it comes to subsidies for the poor but not subsidies for the comfortably off, for the relatively rich in Indian terms.”

PMO wrote to Ministry about Mangar forest

‘Schools need child protection policy’

In the wake of five girls being molested by a teacher at a school in Jehangirpuri, NGO HAQ: Centre for Child Rights on Tuesday wrote to the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) to take cognisance of the incident. It asked the DCPCR to ensure that schools follow a proper recruitment process and have a child protection policy in place.

An easy interface for the internet of things

With the advent of the Internet of things, potentially billions of devices will report data about themselves, making it possible to create new applications in areas as diverse as factory optimisation, car maintenance, or simply keeping track of your stuff online. But doing this today requires at least some degree of programming knowledge. Now Bug Labs, a New York City company, is trying to make it as easy to create an Internet of things application as it is to put a file into Dropbox.

With a new service called Freeboard, Bug Labs is giving people a simple one-click way to publish data from a “thing” to its own Web page (Bug Labs calls this “dweeting”). To get a sense of this, visit Dweet.io with your computer or mobile phone, click “try it now,” and you’ll see raw data from your device itself: its GPS coordinates and even the position of your computer mouse. The data is now on a public Web page and available for analysis and aggregation; another click stops this sharing.

Gyaan

Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to automatically transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IoT has evolved from the convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and the Internet.

A thing, in the Internet of Things, can be a person with a heart monitor implant, a farm animal with a biochip transponder, an automobile that has built-in sensors to alert the driver when tire pressure is low -- or any other natural or man-made object that can be assigned an IP address and provided with the ability to transfer data over a network. So far, the Internet of Things has been most closely associated with machine-to-machine (M2M) communication in manufacturing and power, oil and gas utilities. Products built with M2M communication capabilities are often referred to as being smart. (See: smart label, smart meter, smart grid sensor)

IPv6’s huge increase in address space is an important factor in the development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson, who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer History Museum,” the address space expansion means that we could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.”

MCQs

Q1. Which of the following were recommendations of Sundar Committee appointed by central government in 2005 for Road Safety and traffic management:

1. An apex body National Road Safety & Traffic Management Board with regulatory functions only

2. setting up of the state level bodies namely State Road Safety Boards

3. earmarking of 1% of total proceeds of cess on diesel and petrol for Road Safety Fund.

4. decriminalization of road accidents

a. 1,2,3,4

b. 1,2,3

c. 2,3,4

d. 1

Q2. Which if the following are correct regarding Nataraja form of Shiva

1. purpose of the dance is to release humans from their illusions

2.  gestures of the dance represent Shiva’s three activities 

3. In the sculpture Shiva is shown as a creator of fire symbolized by arch of flames

4. front right hand is in the abhay mudra 

a. 1,2,3,4

b. 1,2,3

c. 2,3,4

d. 1,4

Q3. Which of the following statement is incorrect:

a. IPv6 address is 128 bits long

b. Internet of things is a technology to use internet on everything

c. Machine to machine (M2M) refers to technologies that allow both wireless and wired systems to communicate with other devices of the same type

d. Dweeting is term used by Bug Labs for its application Freeboard to transmit data from things using internet.