Current Affairs Assam – October 2017 e-Magazine
October 25
Xi secures 2nd term as head of China’s ruling Communist Party
Xi Jinping secured a second five-year term as the head of the ruling Communist Party as it unveiled its new leadership with the Chinese President attaining iconic status enjoyed by modern China’s founder Chairman Mao Zedong.
Xi was elected in a closed-door vote to head the Politburo Standing Committee while Prime Minister Li Keqiang retained his seat on the ruling council alongside five new members.
Xi and Li walked along with members of the new Politburo Standing Committee before a media event telecast live all over world from Beijing’s massive Great Hall of the People.
Rs 2.11 lakh crore to be pumped into PSU banks
The Centre announced an aggressive Rs 2.11 lakh crore capital infusion for the NPA-hit public sector banks over a period of two years.Out of this, Rs 1.35 lakh crore will be through the recapitalisation bonds, while remaining Rs 76,000 crore from the budgetary support, Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Kumar said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the capital infusion would be done over the next two fiscals. He also said the capital infusion would be accompanied by a series of banking reforms which would be spelt out in the next few months.
The Finance Minister said banks would get Rs 18,000 crore under the Indradhanush plan. Under the Indradhanush roadmap introduced in 2015, the government had announced to infuse Rs 70,000 crore in state-run banks over four years to meet their capital requirement in line with global risk norms, known as Basel-III.
In line with the plan, public sector banks were given Rs 25,000 crore in 2015-16, and a similar amount has been earmarked for the following years. Besides, Rs 10,000 crore each would be infused in 2017-18 and 2018-19.
Point2Remember – Non-performing assets of banks have increased from Rs 2.75 lakh in March 2015 to Rs 7.33 crore as on June 2017.
October 26
Jeff Bezos Replaces Bill Gates as World’s Richest Person
According to Forbes magazine, Jeff Bezos surpassed Bill Gates as the richest person in the world. The fortune of Amazon’s founder reached some $90.6 billion, compared with the $90.1 billion that the online edition of the magazine attributes to Gates. This is not the first time that Bezos has outpaced Gates it previously happened in the month of July 2017.
Burundi becomes first country to leave International Criminal Court
African country Burundi has withdrawn from International Criminal Court (ICC) with effect has thus become the first nation. International Criminal Court is an international tribunal (located in Hague, Netherlands) having authority to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In recent years, governments of three African countries, South Africa, Gambia and Burundi expressed their intent to leave ICC citing the reason that it focuses too much on African nations.
FACTIFILE – International Criminal Court (ICC)
- The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal.
- It sits in The Hague in the Netherlands.
- The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
- The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer situations to the Court.
- The ICC began functioning on 1 July 2002, the date that the Rome Statute entered into force.
- The Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty which serves as the ICC’s foundational and governing document.
- States which become party to the Rome Statute, for example by ratifying it, become member states of the ICC. Currently, there are 123 states which are party to the Rome Statute and therefore members of the ICC.
- The ICC has four principal organs: the Presidency, the Judicial Divisions, the Office of the Prosecutor, and the Registry.
- The President is the most senior judge chosen by his or her peers in the Judicial Division, which hears cases before the Court. The Office of the Prosecutor is headed by the Prosecutor who investigates crimes and initiates proceedings before the Judicial Division. The Registry is headed by the Registrar and is charged with managing all the administrative functions of the ICC, including the headquarters, detention unit, and public defense office.
October 27
Call for Indo-Bangladesh pact
There is a need for the communities living in the Lower Brahmaputra River Basin (LBRB) in Assam and Bangladesh to build their capacities for implementing the best practices of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), learning from each other’s best practices, for enhancing their resilience in these areas.
Point2beNoted: Following points are important on How Poor countries can improve Social development/environmental resilient
It needs mention here that world bodies have highly praised Bangladesh for its achievements in the areas of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, etc.
‘The Bangladesh Rio+20: National Report on Sustainable Development’ prepared in May 2012, claimed that Bangladesh had performed very well on the social front. Already, it has achieved several millennium development goals (MDGs).
“On this front, the country has done better than most of the other SAARC member countries including India. Bangladesh in fact has adopted Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan (BCCSAP) in July 2009, being the first country in the world to do so, to provide overall policy and action guidance and outline action programmes.
“Bangladesh has also set up the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund (BCCTF) in 2009, Another Fund called Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF) has been established in 2010.”
People living in the LBRB areas that cover India and Bangladesh, are highly vulnerable to water and climate-induced disasters such as flooding, river bank erosion, sand deposition-induced land degradation, droughts as well as erratic and changed nature of such disasters. These disasters are affecting millions of people in various ways in these two countries.
Climate change is compounding the existing water management challenges in the lower Brahmaputra basin.
Natural wealth of Dima Hasao yet to be documented
Forests cover more than 80 per cent of Dima Hasao, making it the greenest district of Assam; yet little is known about its faunal and floral diversity as this invaluable natural wealth still awaits exploration, assessment and documentation.
This is also in sharp contrast to the early conservation initiatives by British ornithologists in Dima Hasao way back in the 19th century when Allan Octavian Hume, the pioneer of Indian ornithology (remembered more as one of the founders of the Indian National Congress) explored the pristine forests of the area.
A O Hume was posted in Haflong as a British officer and as an avid bird watcher he explored the lofty mountainous jungles there. The house where he resided is still there and it is worth a heritage,” Dr Anwaruddin Choudhury, ornithologist and Development Commissioner for Hill Areas, Government of Assam.
Apparently, the general neglect meted out to the hills district resulted in severe infrastructure bottlenecks and the rugged, inaccessible terrain hindered wildlife documentation. Even today, the hills in and around Haflong are difficult to access with hardly any motorable roads.
Dima Hasao is a treasure trove of flora and fauna even though we do not exactly know about its extent and worth for want of logistics. It has a large presence of both carnivores and herbivores, besides birds. The last census recorded the presence of tigers, while elephants are also known to frequent these forests.
As the district does not have any wildlife sanctuary or national park, that has also come in the way of wildlife documentation.
Dima Hasao has a wide diversity of medicinal plants. Nepenthes khasiana, commonly called pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant, is naturally available inside the forests beyond the Umrangso area bordering Meghalaya – a new record for Assam. Ophiorrhiza rugosa var. decumbens, a small annual herb containing an alkaloid Camptothecin used for cancer cure, is also found here. A plant belonging to Zingiberaceae family with a new genus, Larsenianthus assamensis, was discovered a couple of years ago.
Point2Remember – “A O Hume, who is the father of Indian ornithology.
Reliance Industries Limited is First Indian Company to Cross Rs 6 Trillion Market Capital
Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) became the first Indian company to cross Rs 6 trillion market capitalization after its shares surged over 75% so far this year and hit a fresh lifetime high. Currently, its market cap is at Rs 6.02 trillion. The recent rally in the stock was due to tariff hike by its telecom arm Reliance Jio which, analysts expect, will improve the company’s profitability.
