Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 30 December, 2013

Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams

What we tell ourselves about the Indian IT industry — that it has created wealth in a completely transparent fashion in contrast to the rest of India Inc.
On March 4, 2013, fresh engineering graduates hired by IT firm HCL Technologies staged what was perhaps the largest protest in the history of India’s IT industry.
Their demands were simple: they wanted the company convert the letter of offers that had been handed out into actual jobs.
The students had been issued the letters of intent nearly two years before the protest, in September 2011.
Not only were they not being paid, many of them were also pressured and forced to turn down other job offers as HCL dangled the hook of promising them a join date.
As of October 1, 2013, a number of students were still reportedly waiting to be scooped up; others have been turned away after two years, with the company now saying they aren’t technically qualified to become HCL employees.
This process of maintaining a standing army of unpaid graduates has become characteristic of the IT industry over the last three years.
It offers IT companies a set of talking points when they pitch to clients; the bigger pool of waiting engineers one has, the quicker you can scale up and down.
On April 11, 2013, CBC News published an expose, detailing how IT firm iGATE tightly controlled the lives of Indian employees that had been sent overseas to work on onsite project

South Africa led the way one step at a time, seamlessly blending morning’s consolidation with afternoon’s urgency.
India played the secondary-role, offering the defensive counter-point, muffling the blows while trying to stop the host’s bid to gain a victory in Jacques Kallis’ last match.
At a venue where it suffered four defeats over the last five years, South Africa secured the match and then enhanced its chances of winning a contest that is often losing time to dark clouds moving in from the Indian Ocean.
At close on the fourth day of the second Test here at the Kingsmead Stadium, India scored 68 for two in its second innings after South Africa posted 500 and gained a 166-run first-innings lead. The host is now ahead by 98 runs.

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday described the Gadgil panel report on the Western Ghats as the “road map” for conservation of the ecologically-sensitive hills and hoped it would be resurrected for a “dispassionate debate” once the heat and dust of the next Lok Sabha election settled.
Speaking at a function here to present a Degree of Doctor (Honoris Causa) — conferred by the Central University of Orissa, Koraput — to Prof. Madhav Gadgil, the Minister said the report was put aside without a proper public debate. Whatever little debate there was, he added, was “hijacked by a few political voices who had a vested interest.”
Prof. Gadgil, who has gone on record to criticise the Kasturirangan report, was appointed by Mr. Ramesh during his stint at the Environment & Forests Ministry to head the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel to assess the status of the Ghats and demarcate areas to be notified as ecologically sensitive.

As 2013 draws to a close, the outlook on globalisation and sustainability suggests a tentative balance between two alternative futures: one of intensifying zero-sum competition — a scenario that would be disastrous for the world’s poor — and one of increasing co-operation in a revitalised, rules-based order.
Globalisation, the engine of emerging economies’ growth over the past 15 years, appears to be entering a period of increased stress.
Having previously outstripped GDP growth for 30 years, trade has expanded more slowly since 2011.
About 1,500 “stealth protectionist measures” have been introduced by G20 members since 2008, when they promised to eschew such practices. And amid stagnant wages, high unemployment, and anaemic growth, support for globalisation is waning in advanced economies.
Meanwhile, the world remains way off track for sustainability.
Global greenhouse gas emissions are now 46 per cent higher than they were in 1990, and the International Energy Agency estimates that existing policies will result in long-term warming of between 3.6°C (38.5°F) and 5.3°C — well into the zone where catastrophic climate tipping points could be triggered, potentially wiping out progress made on poverty reduction over the past 15 years.