ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

H IRE -P UR CHASE
SCHEME FOR T EXTILES

Launched by textile ministry the scheme aims to give a boost to modernisation of the weaving sector. Provisions of this scheme are as follows: Under the scheme a special purpose vehicle (SPV), promoted by a group of weavers, a large-scale textile manufacturer and a co-operative or an entrepreneur, will procure the machines and provide them on a hire-purchase basis to the weavers. Indigenous or imported shuttle-less looms and pre-weaving machinery will be eligible for 30 per cent subsidy under this scheme apart from interest subsidy. The scheme has been launched in the revised restructured Technology Upgradation Scheme (RR-TUFS). Many small-scale power loom units cannot afford to invest in bulk to upgrade to shuttle-less looms. The scheme provides them with the opportunity to invest over a period of time and to modernise at least a part of their weaving facility.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
P ACT /A GREEMENTS / J OINT VENTURES
I N D O -F I N L A N D E T HAN OL A GRE EM E NT To promote use of clean technologies, India and Finland signed an agreement to produce indigenous ethanol. As per the deal ONGC and Finlands clean technology firm Chempolis will set up a pilot project to produce ethanol, bio-chemicals and bio-coal from biomass residual matters. Currently 75% of Indias requirements are met through imports.

N ATIONAL /I NTERNATIONAL R EPORTS & S URVEYS

G LOBAL H UNGER I NDEX R EPORT 1
The 2013 GHI is calculated for 120 countries. The number of hungry people in the world was estimated at 842 million in 2011-13. The number of hungry people appears to have declined slightly from the 870 million estimated in 2010-12. About a quarter of the world's hungry, or 210 million, are in India alone.
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GHI: - The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the state of countries(of every country) hunger situation. The three indicators used are: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and the mortality (death) rate of children younger than age five. The report has been brought out by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and two international charities Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide. The index was first published in 2006.

In India the proportion of undernourished declined from about 21% of the population to 17.5%. The proportion of underweight children declined from 43.5% to about 40% and under-five mortality declined from 7.5% to about 6%. India has improved its ranking from 65 to 63. The score for the country improved slightly from 22.9 in 2012 to 21.3 this year. India still continues in the Alarming category of countries classified by severity of hunger. India is one of the three countries outside Sub-Saharan Africa to fall in this category. The other two are Haiti and TimorLeste. Within SAARC countries too, India continued to trail behind Pakistan and Bangladesh on the index.

In comparison to India, other emerging economies with high growth trajectories have done a much better
job at pulling people out of hunger. China improved its ranking by 57.69 per cent between1990-2012, while India showed a 34 per cent improvement in the same period. Brazil, in comparison, had a much better score. Countries that have achieved the highest progress on this front included Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, Ghana, Thailand and Vietnam all achieving more than 55% increase in their GHI score. The index is prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute along with Welthungerhilfe and Concern Worldwide.

MISCELLANEOUS
A WARDS
N OB E L P R I ZE FOR P E A C E The Nobel Peace Prize for Peace 2013 has been awarded to the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) 2 for its efforts to eliminate chemical weapons. These days the organisation has been carrying out its mandate to dismantle the chemical weapon stockpiles of Syria. N OB E L P R I ZE FOR E C ON OMI C S The Nobel Prize in economic sciences for 2013 has been awarded to the American economists Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen and Robert Shiller. Both of them have been awarded the prize for their work on empirical analysis of asset prices. As per laureates findings there is no way to predict price of stocks and bonds over days or weeks. But it is possible to foresee the broad course of these prices over longer periods (of three to five years).

P ERSONALITIES S HIVENDRA S INGH D UNGAR PUR

Shivendra has been selected for this year's Bimal Roy Memorial 3 Emerging Talent Award for his documentary Celluloid Man. Celluloid Man explores the life and work of P. K. Nair - legendary film archivist and founder of the National Film Archive of India.
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OPCW:-It is an intergovernmental organisation, located in The Hague, Netherlands. It works within the framework of the United Nations and established in 1997 by the Chemical Weapons Convention to carry out its mandate which prohibits the use of chemical weapons and requires their destruction. There are 189 member states in OPCW. It claims that its mandate effectively covers 98 per cent of the worlds population.

T ERRY W ALSH
The former Australian Olympian has recently been appointed as chief coach of Indias faltering field hockey team, replacing Michael Nobbs. He is expected to remain in charge till the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

E LEANOR C ATTON
Eleanor Catton is an author from New Zealand has recently won the Man Booker prize 4 2013 for her novel, The Luminaries, published by Granta. She is the youngest novelist to win the prize and has set a new record for the longest winning novel.

P LACES T UTICORIN
The Indian Coast Guard escorted the ship with 35 members to Tuticorin port, around 600 km from Chennai. Seaman Guard Ohio is US company-owned armed ship flying West African country Sierra Leones flag. Semi-automatic weapons have been found on board the ship, but the crew has failed to produce the necessary documents required to carry such weapons.

P HILIPPINES
A 7.1 magnitude quake struck in the central Philippines following a strong cyclone Nari5. The earthquake hit Vietnam's central coast after crossing the Philippines.

A NDHRA P RADESH

AND

O DISHA

Cyclone Phailin is India's fiercest storm in 14 years, smashed into the coastline of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states. Although widespread destruction has been caused by the cyclone but it was an impressive success of disaster preparedness efforts of Indian authorities. Phailin cyclone was a tropical cyclone6 categorised as very severe. Most intense cyclone ever to hit India was the Odisha super cyclone, which crossed the Orissa coast near Paradip on October 29, 1999. It had an

The Bimal Roy Memorial Society has been conferring this award since 1997. The organization honours emerging talents from the Indian film industry including performing artists, technicians, directors, musicians etc. Bimal Roy was one of the most acclaimed Indian film directors of all time.
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The Man Booker prize was launched in1969 aims to promote the finest in fiction by rewarding the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The prize is awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language. To maintain the consistent excellence of the Man Booker Prize, judges are chosen from a wide range of disciplines. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives 50,000 and, like all the shortlisted authors, a cheque for 2,500 and a designer bound copy of their book.
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The name Nari has been used to symbolise three tropical cyclones in the north western Pacific Ocean. The name was contributed by the Republic of Korea and means lily. This years Nari typhoon is the third in this category. Previous Nari cyclones were occurred in 2001 and 2007.
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Tropical cyclone: A tropical cyclone is a rotational low pressure system in tropics when the central pressure falls by 5 to 6 h Pa from the surrounding and maximum sustained wind speed reaches 34 knots (about 62 km/h). It is a vast, violent whirl of diameter 150 km to 800 km, spiraling around a centre and progressing along the surface of the sea at the rate of 300-500 km a day. A fully developed Tropical cyclone has a central cloud-free region of calm winds, known as the "eye" of the cyclone, with a diameter varying from 10 to 50 km. surrounding the eye is the "wall cloud region" characterised by very strong winds and torrential rain, which is about 10-150 km wide. Winds over this region rotate around the centre and resemble. Wind speed falls off gradually away from this core region. The height of the cyclone is about 15 km. A mature cyclone releases energy equivalent to that of 100 hydrogen bombs. Over the North Indian

estimated sustained maximum surface wind speed of about 140 knots (260 km/h) at the time of landfall. The lowest
estimated central pressure was 912 h Pa.

Ocean the life of a cyclone is 5-6 days. It has hurricane intensity for 2-4 days, as against the global average of 6 days.