Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS 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.