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Basics:  CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) is the intelligence agency of USA meant for combatting external threat. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is the one which is responsible for combating internal threat. MI5 (Military intelligence 5) works for UK the same way the CIA works. MI6 works the way FBI works. IB (Intelligence Bureau) is India's intelligence agency which keeps and eye on internal threat. RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) is India's intelligency agency taking care of external threat. CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) is the criminal investigation body of India. NIA (National Intelligence Agency) is a federal agency to combat terror in India. Story goes like this: Before 9/11 United States CIA had Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) for terrorist threat. It was actually meant for external threat. On the same ground, Bajpayee Govt. formed CTC under an executive order as a part of IB and named it Multi Agency Center (MAC). As IB its...

Advanced bio-fuels could create millions of jobs while greening the economy Transforming agricultural residues into advanced bio fuels could create millions of jobs worldwide, economic growth, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and energy security by 2030, according to a report by Novozymes, the world leader in bio innovation and industrial enzymes. The Bloomberg New Energy Finance report “Moving towards a next-generation ethanol economy'' was commissioned by Novozymes. It estimates the socio-economic prospects of deploying advanced bio fuels in eight of the highest agricultural-producing regions in the world, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, EU-27, India, Mexico and US. “A huge global resource of agricultural residues can be harvested sustainably every year without altering current land use patterns and without interfering with the food chain,'' according to Steen Riisgaard, CEO of Novozymes. According to the report, an estimated 17.5 per cen...

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) offers incentive to Bank for Warehouse Loans. Bank can avail loan at 8% p.a. for refinance in Warehouse. Bank paying loan on schedule will get 1.5% rebate loan payment. The scheme has been conceptualized out of Rs. 2000 crore dedicated fund in Union Budget 2011-12. This will create 9 million tonne of additional storage capacity. All Kisan Credit Card holders can avail loan at 7% p.a. interest rate for stored for maximum of 6 months post-harvest. Warehouse established by farmers must be accredited to Warehouse Development and Regulation Authority (WDRA) to be eligible for loan.

Announcement : Election Commission generally announces the schedule of election a few weeks before the formal process set in motion. The model code of conduct for guidance of candidates and political parties immediately comes into effect after such announcement. Notification : The formal process of election starts with notification. After notification, candidates can start filing their nominations. This is at least 23 days before the polling. Last date of Nomination : This is generally a week after the Notification date. This means candidates get one week for them to be nominated. Scrutiny of Nomination : This is done the next day of the last day of nomination. Last day of withdrawal of Candidate : This is generally 2-3 days after the scrutiny of nomination. Campaigning : A candidate gets at least 2 weeks for campaigning. He must stop campaigning before 48 hours of polling. Polling : This is generally 3-4 weeks after the notification. This is after at least 23 day...

Will it be the next geopolitical battleground or remain the common heritage of humankind? A retired Rear Admiral of the Chinese PLA Navy, Yin Zhuo, caused a major stir in March 2010, when in a speech to the Chinese Peoples' Political Consultative Conference, he declared: “The Arctic belongs to all the people around the world as no nation has sovereignty over it.” China, he said, must also have a share of the region's resources. Resources, reserves The five nations which ring the Arctic Ocean, namely the U.S. Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia, disagree, though they themselves have competing territorial claims. The stakes are enormous: The Arctic Circle encloses 21 million square kilometres of land and 13 million sq.km of mostly ice-bound seas. By way of comparison, India's total land area is 3.3 million sq.km. It is estimated that the region may hold over 40 per cent of the current global reserves of oil and gas. There may also be significant reserves of co...

Date : January 30, 2012 The Reserve Bank of India's third quarter review of monetary policy was devoid of major surprises. The only change in monetary policy instruments — a cut in the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) by 0.50 percentage point to 5.5 per cent — was largely expected. The move will release Rs.32,000 crore of funds impounded from banks, almost immediately. The key policy interest rate, the repo rate, remains unchanged at 8.5 per cent. Consequently, the reverse repo stays at 7.5 per cent and the marginal standing facility at 9.5 per cent. A cut in the repo rate would have more definitely indicated a downward shift in the monetary stance but the RBI has argued that the CRR reduction is the best it could do under the prevailing circumstances and ought to be interpreted as a signal for a softer monetary policy regime. According to the RBI, the CRR is a policy instrument with liquidity dimension. Its reduction will bring down the cost of money for banks and have a...

Date : January 30, 2012 In yet another move to get information about black money stashed away abroad, India has signed the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, a multilateral agreement that promotes international cooperation while respecting the rights of taxpayers. This will send a strong signal that India and the other 31 signatory countries have joined hands to ensure that individuals and multinational enterprises pay the right amount of tax, at the right time and in the right place. The Convention provides for administrative cooperation among the parties in the assessment and collection of taxes, with a view to combating tax avoidance and evasion, according to a statement by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) here. With taxpayers increasingly operating on a global basis, tax authorities are moving from bilateral to multilateral cooperation and from exchange of information on request to other forms of co...

Counterfeit notes that are not easily identified sometimes drives us into tight corners. Not all of us have the ‘currency knowledge’ to find the difference, which can be known only after minute scrutiny. Here is how you can recognize it: See if the note is crisp and thin. The notes are printed on optical fiber paper. Fake notes are printed on thick paper make of bamboo pulp. If it is a Xeroxed note the colour and print look faded. Look for the ‘Intaglio” on the denomination i.e.1000,500,100,50 20 ,10 or 5 ( the embossed print that enables the blind to touch and know the denomination of the currency). The chemical’omran’ is used to print in ‘Intaglio’ which looks bright. Intaglio will be missing in counterfeit notes. Look at the note against the light, for the fine and shining ‘security band’on the right side of ‘Intaglio’ look for the faint water mark For a genuine currency note, the number panel will be regular and when scrutinized against ultra violet rays,the letters printed ...

Bank Rate Bank rate is the rate at which RBI lends to the commercial banks and other financial intermediaries. Bank rates imply a long term outlook on the interest rates and are an outcome of a long term monetary policy. It is the bank rate based on which the commercial banks decide the lending rates to the customers. Hence, any change in the bank rates have direct bearing on the lending rates to the customers. This does not require Security Deposit. Repo Rate (RR) The rate at which Reserve Bank lends money to Banks. Bank borrows money from Banks by submitting securities. submitting securities is a requisite for Repurchase Transaction (Repo transaction). Reverse Repo Rate (RRR) The rate at which Reserve Bank borrows money from Banks. Usually Both the rates are increased or decreased by same basis points.  When Repo rate is increased, borrowing money from RBI gets costlier for Banks and hence Banks increases  lending interest rate. This decreases lo...

A military coup (d'etat) is an organized action by the armed forces of a country meant to overthrow and replace its government. It can be successful (the former government is replaced by a new one controlled by the military) or not (the government stays in power), it can be temporary (the military relinquishes power quickly) or permanent (the military remains in control for lengthy periods of time), bloody or bloodless.  It is different from a revolution, since a coup is a top-down action, controlled and generated from an existing structure of the state against another, rather than a bottom-up action of rebellion against the whole government coming from non-governament actors (as in the case of a revolution), as is different from a civil war (where two factions, typically a governmental and non-governmental actor fight for power in a bloody war for lengthy periods), since a coup can be both non-bloody and short in duration (such as the successful Thai coup of 2006).

What makes SOPA and PIPA especially toxic is the threat they pose to all dimensions of a website's existence - physical presence, findability and revenue stream. With 4.5 million signatures on a Google petition and one million messages sent to the United States Congress via the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in a single day, January 18, advocates of a free Internet have mounted a determined bid to stall new legislation that can chill free speech. The global chorus against two Bills that are winding their way through the American legal system is growing. The two draft laws in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, now known around the world by the acronyms SOPA and PIPA (for Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act), have raised a storm on the Internet. They are seen as updated versions of the “Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act” (COICA) which could not make progress in the Senate earlier. In a small victory for opponents, key movers of the Bil...

This is a voting system which is designed to achieve proportional representation thorough preferential voting. Under STV, an elector’s vote is initially allocated to his/her most preferred candidate, and then after the candidate is either elected or eliminated, any surplus or unused vote are transferred to according to voter’s stated preference. The system minimizes “wasted” votes, provides approximately proportional representation, and enables votes to be explicitly cast for individual candidates rather than for closed party lists. It achieves this by using multi-seat constituencies (voting district) and by transferring votes to other eligible candidates that would otherwise wasted on sure losers and sure winners. Voting: In STV each voter ranks the list of candidates in order of preference. In other words, the voter places a “1” beside their most preferred candidate, a “2” beside their second preferred candidate, and so on. The ballot paper submitted by the voters therefore c...