General Studies-Mains 2009 Important Topic Notes CONTENTS 1. Medstream project 2. New Constitution of the Maldives 3. B.K.

Chaturvedi Committee on Oil And Gas Procing 4. South Asian Water Disputes 5. Project Arrow, 6. Collection Of Stats Bill 7. Pandit Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi 8. Ganga River Basin Authority 9. SACOSAN-III 10. BIMSTEC 11. Shaurya missile 12. International Year of Astronomy (IYA) 13. Raghurajan Committee on Financial Sector 14. Caribbean Community (CARICOM), 15. Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 16. generic drug 17. International Year of Natural Fibres 18. National Water Grid 19. Darfur Peace Agreement, 20. Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) 21. Nishant 22. Stiglitz Commission on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System 23. Internet telephony

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Medstream project

(the Infrastructure Corridor) between Turkey and Israel

y

will lead oil, natural gas and optic fibers/water/electricity

y

India has shown great interest in the project, and that it wishes to participate as a major investor in the project. New Constitution of the Maldives

In June 2008,

assembly, called the "Special Majlis", competed a new constitution

y

It was ratified by the president on 7 August 2008, with proposed elections to be held in October 2008 and March 2009
y

it states that "a non-Muslim may not become a citizen of the Maldives" and therefore it removed citizenship from around 3,000 Maldivians (0.85% of the population). B.K.Chaturvedi Committee on Oil And Gas Procing Recommended 1. The committee had recommended rise in petrol and diesel prices 2. imposition of 'Metro Extra tax of Rs 2 per litre on diesel in four installments in large cities where the fuel was being used in expensive cars. 3. bringing petrol prices in alignment with market rates by march 2009 and diesel by 2010 with an indicative ceiling, which means prices would have to be increased every month 4. Committee is also against subsidized LPG (Liquefied petroleum gas) supply and says 5. there should be one time increase of Rs 75 per cylinder and only six refills should be permitted this year. 6. all subsidies should have a monetary ceiling and should be restricted to only below poverty line families. 7. a proposal of smart cards or cash transfers for such families. 8. completely slashing import duty on petrol and diesel.

South Asian Water Disputes

1. Indo-Pakistan dispute over the Wular Barrage (The Indus Waters Treaty), 2. Indo-Bangladesh water dispute over the Farakka Barrage (The Ganges Water Treaty) and 3. the Indo-Nepal dispute over the Mahakali River Treaty.

'Project Arrow',

department of posts (DoP) launched 'Project Arrow',

y

to bring the rural populace in direct communication with the outside world and
y

bring benefits of development to their doorsteps.

y

one-stop shop for retail products and

y

offer a single window facility for banking, money remittances and other financial products and services including social and
y

civic initiatives such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and National Old Age Pension Scheme.

Collection Of Stats Bill 2007 Why? 1. widen the base for data collection to cover individuals and households along with industrial and commercial units. 2. amend the Collection of Statistics Act, 1953to meet the challenges arising out of liberalisation and globalisation regime manifested, particularly by the WTO Agreement. 3. Penalties for offences, such as refusal to furnish information or providing incorrect data, would vary from Rs 1000 to Rs 10,000 individuals and industrial and commercial enterprises. 4. The offences would be tried in a summary way to avoid prolonged litigation.

Pandit Bhimsen Gururaj Joshi 1. Indian vocalist in the Hindustani classical tradition. 2. A member of the Kirana Gharana (school),

3. renowned for the khayal form of singing, as well as for his popular renditions of devotional music (bhajans and abhangs). 4. In 2008, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour

Ganga River Basin Authority for comprehensive management of the basin. Ganga Basin states of 1. Uttarakhand, 2. Uttar Pradesh, 3. Bihar 4. Jharkhand. 5. West Bengal
y

ministry of environment and forests will issue the notification under the Environment Protection Act,
y

replace the current piecemeal efforts to clean up the Ganga with an integrated approach that sees the river as an ecological entity.
y

authority chaired by the prime minister will consist of the chief ministers of the Ganga basin states as members along with related ministers of the central government.

SACOSAN-III

Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN-III), New Delhi, 1621 Nov 2008
y

The Prime Minister said that sanitation has to be located in an integrated framework of public health policy to ensure that sanitation activities are indeed adequately funded.

20 per cent of toilets built in the country are not functional due to lack of adequate maintenance and poor construction?
y

"Nirmal Gram Puraskar" is an incentive based scheme given to gram panchayats for achieving complete sanitation facilities in their villages by the Rural Development Ministry. BIMSTEC On 6 June 1997, a sub-regional grouping was formed in Bangkok and given the name BIST-EC (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Cooperation). Myanmar joined the organization as a full member at a Special Ministerial Meeting held in Bangkok on 22 December 1997, upon which the name of the grouping was changed to BIMST-EC. BIMSTEC provides a unique link between South Asia and Southeast Asia bringing together 1.3 billion people - 21 percent of the world population, a combined GDP of US$750 billion, and a considerable amount of complementarities. A study shows the potential of US$ 43 to 59 billion trade creation under BIMSTEC FTA. BIMSTEC covers 13 Priority Sectors lead by member countries in a voluntary manner; namely, Trade & Investment, Technology, Energy, Transport & Communication, Tourism, Fisheries, Agriculture, Cultural Co-operation, Environment and Disaster Management, Public Health, People-to-People Contact, Poverty Alleviation and Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crimes.

Shaurya missile

a canister launched hypersonic surface-to-surface tactical missile

y

developed by the Indian Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO)

y

for use by the Indian Armed Forces.

y

range of between 600-700 km

y

capable of carrying a payload of one-tonne conventional or nuclear warhead International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009)

is a year-long celebration of astronomy, taking place in 2009

y

coincide with the 400th anniversary of the first recorded astronomical observations with a telescope by Galileo Galilei
y

publication of Johannes Kepler's Astronomia nova in the 17th century.

y

The Year was declared by the 62nd General Assembly of the United Nations

Raghurajan Committee on Financial Sector

Recommended 1. hasten the development of the debt market so that banks don't bear all the risk of infrastructure investments. 2. He also called for setting up small local area banks so that there is faster financial inclusion. 3. He thinks that renminbi (Chinese currency) will replace $ as internation currency. 4. RBI would lose creditability if it monetizes the deficit. 5. He said one way the RBI can distance itself from the government is by transferring the responsibility of debt management to the government. 6. debt management office basically manages the issuance and auction of government bonds. This is currently being done by the RBI.

Caribbean Community (CARICOM),

is an organisation of 15 Caribbean nations and dependencies.

y

CARICOM's main purposes are to promote economic integration and cooperation among its members, to ensure that the benefits of integration are equitably shared, and to coordinate foreign policy
y

Seat of Secretariat Georgetown, Guyana

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas

7-9 January 2008, Chennai

y

9 January being the arrival of Mahatama Gandhi in india from South Africa.
y

event has been organized every year since 2003

y

sponsored by the
o

Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs

o

FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).

generic drug

is a drug which is produced and distributed without patent protection.

y

The generic drug may still have a patent on the formulation but not on the active ingredient.

International Year of Natural Fibres United Nations General Assembly declared 2009 as the International Year of Natural Fibres objectives of the International Year of Natural Fibres would be:
y

To raise awareness and stimulate demand for natural fibres;

y

To encourage appropriate policy responses from governments to the problems faced by natural fibre industries
y

To foster an effective and enduring international partnership among the various natural fibres industries;
y

To promote the efficiency and sustainability of the natural fibres industries.

National Water Grid by Sir Arthur Cotton, that extraordinary engineer-economist who formulated a comprehensive sub-continental plan for the formation of a national water grid
y

plan involved navigation and irrigation, storage

y

took into account irrigation of a vast extent of land and was not restricted to navigation alone.
y

Andhra Pradesh Government has installed his statue on the Tank Bund in Hyderabad along with the other heroes of Andhra.
y

He is perhaps the only Englishman whose statue was installed in India after Independence. UNDP mission on National Water Grid 1971-72 felt that "India's national economy in its development and growth will be confronted with the problem of increasing scarcity of water within the next thirty years. From basic compilation of future water demand and water yields it becomes evident that by the year 2000 or so, the National Water Grid will be a vital necessity". Darfur Peace Agreement,

signed May 5, 2006, by the largest rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Mini Menawi, and the Sudanese Government, is an important achievement for peace in Darfur Trans-Asian Railway (TAR)

is a project to create an integrated freight railway network across Europe and Asia. TAR is a project of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). has sometimes been called the "Iron Silk Road" in reference to the historical Silk Road trade routes. Nishant

is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

y

developed by India's ADE (Aeronautical Development Establishment) a branch of DRDO for the Indian Armed Forces.

primarily tasked with intelligence gathering over enemy territory and also for recce, surveillance, target designation, artillery fire correction, damage assessment, Stiglitz Commission on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System

In 2009, Stiglitz chaired the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, informally known as the Stiglitz Commission,
y

convened by the President of the United Nations General Assembly

y

"to review the workings of the global financial system, including major bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF, and to suggest steps to be taken by Member States to secure a more sustainable and just global economic order" Internet telephony refers to communications services voice, facsimile, and/or voice-messaging applications that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in originating an Internet telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet; the process is reversed at the receiving end. Benefits
y

Routing phone calls over existing data networks to avoid the need for separate voice and data networks.^[25]
y

Conference calling, IVR, call forwarding, automatic redial, and caller ID features that traditional telecommunication companies (telcos) normally charge extra for are available free of charge from open source VoIP implementations such as Asterisk or FreeSWITCH.
y

Costs are lower, mainly because of the way Internet access is billed compared to regular telephone calls. While regular telephone calls are billed by the minute or second, VoIP calls are billed per megabyte (MB). In other words, VoIP calls are billed per amount of information (data) sent over the Internet and not according to the time connected to the telephone network. In practice the amount charged for the data transferred in a given period is far less than that charged for the amount of time connected on a regular telephone line.
y

The ability to transmit more than one telephone call over a single broadband connection.^[26] without the need to add extra lines

Secure calls using standardized protocols (such as Secure Real-time Transport Protocol.) Most of the difficulties of creating a secure telephone connection over traditional phone lines, such as digitizing and digital transmission, are already in place with VoIP. It is only necessary to encrypt and authenticate the existing data stream.^[27]
y

Location independence. Only a sufficiently fast and stable Internet connection is needed to get a connection from anywhere to a VoIP provider.
y

Integration with other services available over the Internet, including video conversation, message or data file exchange during the conversation, audio conferencing, managing address books, and passing information about whether other people are available to interested parties.
y

I got one correction to make BIMSTEC is actually 'Bay Of Bengal Initiative for MultiSectoral Technical and Economic cooperation'. It is a grouping of countries such as Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand (the list till here matches the letters in the acronym) and finally Bhutan, Nepal (These are landlocked!). Aim; To promote economic coperation, social progress and mutual assistance amongst these countries. BIMSTEC covers 13 Priority Sectors led by member countries in a voluntary manner namely Trade and Investment, Tourism, Fisheries, Counter Terrorism, Energy, Transport and Communications etc.