Char Dham: Veteran environmentalist Ravi Chopra has resigned as chairman of the Supreme Court’s High Powered Committee (HPC) on the Char Dham project, saying that his “belief that the HPC could protect this fragile (Himalayan) ecology has been shattered”. In his resignation letter to the secretary general of the Supreme Court on January 27, […]
Category: Current Affairs
Russia Exclusion From SWIFT?
Society For Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT): As tensions exacerbate between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine, political commentators say that the United States could, as a last resort, exclude Russia from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). If a country is excluded from the most participatory financial facilitating platform, its foreign funding […]
Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari: Madras High Court
Collegium System For The Appointment Of Judges: The Supreme Court Collegium has recommended appointing Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari as Chief Justice of Madras High Court. It is the system of appointment and transfer of judges that has evolved through judgments of the Supreme Court (SC), and not by an Act of Parliament or by […]
National Single Window System
National Single Window System: Jammu & Kashmir became the first Union Territory to be onboard the National Single Window System (NSWS). This marks a major leap in Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) in the Union Territory. NSWS is linked with India Industrial Land Bank (IILB) which hosts 45 industrial parks of J&K. This will […]
PM-POSHAN Scheme
PM-POSHAN Scheme: The central government requested state governments/union territory administrations to explore the possibility of introducing millets under the PM POSHAN Scheme preferably in the districts where eating millets is a culturally accepted food habit. NITI Aayog has also been advocating the need to introduce millets in the mid-day meal programme (now PM POSHAN […]
Status Quo in Monetary Policy Rates
Monetary Policy: The Reserve Bank of India maintained status quo in policy rates as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted unanimously to keep the policy repo rate at 4% to keep the stance accommodative. While announcing the Bi-monthly policy RBI Governor Shaktikant Das said, MSF rate and bank rate will remain unchanged at 4.25%. […]
Russia – Belarus Relations
Belarus: Russia rolled its tanks across Belarus for live-fire drills that drew an ominous warning from NATO and added urgency to Western efforts to avert a feared invasion of Ukraine. The war games — set to run until February 20 — followed a gradual Russian military build-up around Ukraine that some U.S. estimates say […]
Liquidity Window For Healthcare
Liquidity Window For Healthcare: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) proposed to extend the term-liquidity facility of ₹50,000 crore offered to emergency health services by three months till June 30. Last year in May, RBI had announced an on-tap liquidity window of ₹50,000 crore, at the repo rate with tenors of up to three […]
What Is Tulip Mania?
What Is ‘tulip mania’? A week after budget 2022-23 proposed 30 per cent tax on gains made from cryptocurrency trades, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das termed it as a “threat to macroeconomic and financial stability”. Tulip mania was a period when tulips were recently introduced and bought in large quantities by […]
Who was Sri Madhvacharya?
Sri Madhvacharya: The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi paid his obeisances to Sri Madhvacharya on the occasion of Madhva Navami. Madhvacharya (CE 1199-1278 or CE 1238–1317) was also known as Purna Prajna and Ānanda Tīrtha. He was a Hindu philosopher and the chief proponent of the Dvaita (dualism) school of Vedanta. Madhva called his […]