A river in New Zealand has become the first in the world to be recognised as a living entity with the legal status of a person after a 170-year battle by the local Maori people. The nation’s parliament passed a bill to allow Whanganui River –known by the Maoris as Te Awa Tupua - to represent its own interests and advocate on its own behalf. The third-largest river in New Zealand, the Whanganui runs approximately 321 km from the interior mountains in the Hawkes Bay region of northern New Zealand, south until it me... Read More...
The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is a simple graphical indicator that can be used to assess whether the target being observed contains live green vegetation or not. In an effort to monitor major fluctuations in vegetation and understand how they affect the environment, 35 years ago Earth scientists began using satellite remote sensors to measure and map the density of green vegetation over the Earth. By carefully measuring the wavelengths and intensity of visible and near-infrared light reflected by the land surface back up into space, scientists use an algorithm called a "Vegetation Index" to quantify the concentrations of gr... Read More...
Government has enlarged the definition of what constitutes a startup to a venture that's as much as seven years old from five now, relaxed the norms for tax benefits and included employment generation potential to give a big push to job creation and entrepreneurship. That's to account for the longer gestation period for companies in the sector. These changes are an effort to ensure ease of starting up new businesses to promote the startup ecosystem and build a nation of job creators instead of job seekers. The Startup India initiative launched in January 2016 offered incentives to such ventures to encourage entrepreneurship and innovation. ... Read More...
A chemical commonly found in hard plastics, currency bills and paper receipts, may increase the aggressiveness of breast cancer. Bisphenol S (BPS) may increase the aggressiveness of breast cancer as it is an endocrine-disrupting chemical, researchers say. Most breast cancers are estrogen receptor positive and, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, 55 to 65 % of women who inherit a harmful mutation in the BRCA1 gene will develop breast cancer. Read More...
The GST will greatly improve a fractured tax system and help create an integrated Indian market. But to make the most of this bold innovation, the government has a lot more work to do. Current tax system Under the current tax system, different states impose separate levies as goods move across the country. Truckers spend hours idling at internal borders, filling out forms and awaiting inspection. Small and medium-sized companies prefer not to grow rather than have to deal with the administrative bur... Read More...
India's "minimum credible nuclear deterrence" doctrine and "no first use" policy are based on the concept of deterrence by denial, rather than deterrence by punishment. Should deterrence ever break down, India will have to pay an enormous price for a nuclear first strike by an adversary before launching massive punitive retaliation. Nuclear doctrine has to be ultimately tested in the crucible of operational reality. Across the entire spectrum of conventional conflict, the first use of nuclear weapons by India does not make sound strategic sense. The real distinguishing feature of India's nuclear d... Read More...
Researchers in the United Kingdom have developed a graphene-based sieve that can filter salt out of seawater, a development that could provide drinking water to millions of people around the globe. The applications could be a game-changer in countries where access to safe, clean, drinkable water is severely limited. About Graphene -- an ultra-thin sheet of carbon atoms organized in a hexagonal lattice -- was first identified at the University of Manchester in 2002 and has since been hailed as a "wonder material," with scientists ra... Read More...
29 March 2017 must be recorded as one of the most significant days in the history of federalism in India. By passing the four bills relating to different aspects of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Lok Sabha has, perhaps for the first time put limitations on its own powers, in the interest of federalism, and signed off on a pooling of sovereignty in taxation matters with 32 state and Union territory legislatures. In turn, over the next couple of months all the state legislatures will share their powers of taxation. In the process of sharing and jointly exercising the powers to tax, the GST Council will be... Read More...
One of the central promises of the new goods and services tax (GST) that is set to be rolled out in July is that it will allow companies to restructure their supply chains once the domestic market is truly integrated. It is hard to see how the production structure can be improved radically unless India builds a new logistics network to allow inputs, components and finished goods to move across the country seamlessly. The success of the flagship Make in India programme is also critically dependent on a modern logistics network. An effective multi-modal logistics and transport sector will make our economy more competitive. A specific programme f... Read More...
Recently, the government made it mandatory to link Aadhaar numbers to tax returns and set itself a target of one year within which it would link all mobile numbers to the Aadhaar database. While the Supreme Court agreed to refer these issues to a larger bench, it seemed happy to let the government continue to incorporate Aadhaar into all aspects of our lives. OECD approach Perhaps in anticipation of these events, a number of academic papers have been published recently, agitating the need for a privacy legislation. They have broadly suggested the enactment of a law along the lines of the OECD (Organisation for Economic ... Read More...
In over half a century of naval development, maritime forces have based their combat strategy and modernization on two principal concepts of operations: “sea control” and “sea denial”. A maritime power either dominates the adversary by controlling the littoral seas or denies their use to the adversary. Sea control and Sea denial Sea control is the strategy of choice for an ascendant force but entails a higher operational commitment in dictating the tempo of operations in littoral spaces over prolonged durations. In contrast, a weaker force focuses all its combat efforts in denying the adversa... Read More...
Light Fidelity or Li-Fi technology is a ground-breaking light-based communication technology, which makes use of light waves instead of radio technology to deliver data. Li-Fi can compensate as the radio spectrum becomes overloaded Using the visible light spectrum, Li-Fi technology can transmit data and unlock capacity which is 10,000 times greater than that available within the radio spectrum. The visible light spectrum is plentiful, free and unlicensed, mitigating the radio frequency spectrum crunch effect. Read More...
The polycentric new world order, which was gradually emerging after the end of the Cold War, has begun to fray at the edges. The primary causes are: the growing friction among the major powers, the triumphant rise of the ultra-right wing political parties, dilution in the forces of globalisation and free market economies, and the world’s inability to comprehensively defeat the Islamic State (IS) group. While the progress ... Read More...
India's ties with Latin America have received a clear direction since 2015. Latin America and the Caribbean are the source of 20 percent of this country's crude imports. Right from the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the leaders of 11 Latin American countries in 2016 on the margins of the BRICS Summit in Brazil, the new government has kept up a steady engagement with high-level visits. India imports 20 percent of its crude from Venezuela, Columbia, Mexico and Brazil. In 2012, India overtook China as the largest Asian buyer of Venezuelan crude. India's trade with LAC has grown from less than $2 bi... Read More...
Jawaharlal Nehru once said the Indian Civil Service was “Neither Indian, nor Civil, nor a Service”. Sardar Patel said the civil service was the “steel frame of government machinery”. Thankfully, this team of rivals worked together to create a model for non-elected civil servants that served India well when the primary task was nation-building. But now that the task has shifted to poverty reduction, most citizens do not perceive the Indian state as a high-performance organisation. Read More...
The Niti Aayog will soon start a process to sensitise states towards preparing a Water Management Index (WMI) which will ultimately lead the Centre's think-tank to rank them on the basis of their efforts in efficient management of water resources. The states' performance will be judged on the basis of 28 key indicators. It will cover: Water use efficiency Irrigation status Groundwater recharge Availability of drinking water for both rural and urban areas Watershed development Other sustainable practices in water-related sectors. ... Read More...
What is Rubella? Rubella is a mild viral infection that mainly occurs in children. But a woman infected with the rubella virus during the early stage of pregnancy has a 90% chance of transmitting it to the foetus. The virus can cause hearing impairments, eye and heart defects and brain damage in newborns, and even spontaneous abortion and foetal deaths. Why is the measles-rubella vaccine being administered to children? Buoyed by the elimination of polio six years ago and maternal and neonatal tetanus and yaws in 2016, India has set an ambitious target of eliminating measles and controlling congenital rubella syndrome (CRS), ... Read More...
New Delhi will host leading health researchers and policymakers from Africa and India. This India-Africa Health Sciences Meet (IAHSM) is a follow-up of the India-Africa Summit in October 2015. To accomplish this, there is: a proposed a $100-million India-Africa Development Fund, a $10-million Health Fund and 50,000 scholarships for African students to study in India. Africa and India together cover about a quarter of the world’s land area, support over a third of its population and harbour about half of its disease burden. Infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, childhood diarrhoea and respiratory infections remain big challenges. Howe... Read More...
About The government has come up with a new National Steel Policy 2017 that envisages increasing the capacity in the country, more than 2 fold from 122 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) to 300 mtpa, by 2030. The draft policy lays out two alternatives of its vision — “to create a globally competitive steel industry that promotes inter-sectoral growth” or “to create a self-sufficient steel industry that is technologically advanced, globally competitive and promotes inclusive growth.” While it focuses on impediments like high input costs, availability of raw materials, import dependency and financial stress plaguing ... Read More...
Triangularity has lately become the flavour of the season in international relations discourse. Major powers, beyond their usual bilateral engagements, have been embracing the tripartite mode of engagement in recent times to establish a tactical thread for a twofold advantage: gain more in their foreign policy; and influence collectively the regional balance of power in their favour. A prominent example is the China-Pakistan-Russia triangulation. Its av... Read More...