Some useful information for Mains paper 2

Hi All,
I hope you might find the below information useful for you mains preparation. Sorry I din get much time to format it properly so plz dont mind poor formating.. Thanks.

The Pravasi Bhartiya Bima Yojna, 2006 provides for an insurance cover of a minimum sum of Rs. 5.00 lakhs payable to the nominee/legal heir in the event of death or permanent disability of any Indian emigrant who goes abroad for employment purpose after obtaining emigration clearance from the concerned Protector of Emigrants (POE).
The insurance scheme began on 1st of February, 2006. This Scheme applies to all citizens of India who apply for and obtain an emigration clearance as required under the Emigration Act, 1983 (31 of 1983). This scheme does not apply in case of war or internal conflict in the country to which the citizens of India holding the said policy has gone for work. The Insurance Policy shall be valid for a minimum period of two years or the actual period of contract, whichever is longer.

An Indian all-female United Nations peacekeeping unit has arrived in Liberia, the first such team to be sent on a foreign mission.
More than a hundred female officers and about 20 men engaged in logistics work flew into Liberia on January 30, where they will receive additional training before starting their mission to strengthen the rule of law and maintain peace in the country. U.N. officials hope an all-female unit can inspire and help Liberian women.

The Madhesi are the native people of Nepal who reside in the southern, plains region the Terai which they refer to as Madhesh. Its cultural diversity can be seen in the fact that three distinct religious groups — Hindu, Muslim and Jain—live there.

Earlier known as Internship Programme for Diaspora Youth (IPDY), it is a three-week internship programme for diaspora youth conducted by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs with a view to promote awareness on India, its socio-cultural diversity, its all round development, its emergence as an economic powerhouse, it being a centre of higher education and the ongoing developments in various fields including infrastructure, Information technology etc. The participants from countries having larger population of People of Indian Origin are selected based on recommendations made by Indian Missions/ Posts abroad. They are provided with full hospitality and are reimbursed one-way economy class airfare from their respective country to India.

The Programme is organized in partnership with one of the State Governments. The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS) are the organizational partners.

The next mini Pravasi Bharatiya Divas Convention titled ‘PBD Europe’ will be organized at the historic World Forum in The Hague on Saturday, the 19th September, 2009.
This Convention is expected to bring together members of the Indian Diaspora in Europe at a common platform to discuss the role of the Indian Diaspora in enhancing Indo-European Cooperation, opportunities and challenges faced by them in the fields of culture, heritage & tradition, as also Trade and Investment opportunities available for them in the land of their ancestors. Besides some high dignitaries from Netherlands and India, prominent members of the Indian Diaspora in Europe are expected to take part in this one-day event.

Ministry of overseas indian affairs : The Ministry was headed by a Minister of State (Independent Charge) till recently. Shri Ravi Vayalar is new Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs. On the administrative side, a Secretary to the Government of India heads the Ministry. Presently, the Ministry is organized into three functional Divisions and three functional Units.

Gulf Cooperation Council - GCC
Saudi Arabia was a prime mover in setting up the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981. Other members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Gulf Cooperation Council aims to coordinate resistance to outside intervention in the Gulf. Progress towards economic integration has been slow during the 1980s economic downturn in the region.

The Gulf Cooperation Council seeks to strengthen cooperation (in areas such as agriculture, industry, investment, security, and trade) among its six members: Bahrain, Kuwait, Quatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, created in response to the outbreach of the Iran-Iraq war, established the Gulf Standards Organization in November 1982 and the Gulf Investment Corporation in 1984.

The presidency of the Gulf Cooperation Council rotates yearly among members. Council headquarters are in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.


Diljit Rana and Sir Kumar Bhattacharyya - have been appointed to the House of Lords

Swraj Paul, Baron Paul, (born 1931) is an Indian-born, British-based business magnate and philanthropist. In 1996, he became a life peer, taking the title Baron Paul, of Marylebone in the City of Westminster, sitting in the House of Lords as a Labour peer. In December 2008, he was appointed deputy speaker of the Lords, the first person of Indian origin to hold the post.[1]
Swraj Paul was born in Jalandhar, Punjab in 1931. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by Indira Gandhi in 1983


1. Who is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems? Vinod Khosla. The Sun founder also had an Indian Professor in Computer Technologies at Louisiana State University.
2. Who is the creator of the Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the today's computers run on it)? Vinod Dham.
5. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT &T-Bell Labs is the creator of program languages such as C, C++, and Unix to name a few)? Arun Netravalli.

BANANA is an acronym for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near
Anything (or Anyone). The term is most often used to criticize the ongoing
opposition of certain interest groups to land development. T

Reverse migration is a phenomenon in bird migration. Although some large birds such as swans learn migration routes from their parents, in most small species, such as passerines, the route is genetically programmed, and young birds can innately navigate to their wintering area. Sometimes this programming goes wrong, and the young bird, in its first autumn, migrates on a route 180o from the correct route.

Brain drain or human capital flight is a large emigration of individuals with technical skills or knowledge, normally due to conflict, lack of opportunity, political instability, or health risks. Brain drain is usually regarded as an economic cost, since emigrants usually take with them the fraction of value of their training sponsored by the government.

he Indian Diaspora is a generic term to describe the people who migrated from territories that are currently within the borders of the Republic of India. It also refers to their descendants. The Diaspora is currently estimated to number over twenty million. composed of "NRIs" (Indian citizens not residing in India) and "PIOs" (Persons of Indian Origin who have acquired the citizenship of some other country).

The green gross domestic product (green GDP) is an index of economic growth with the environmental consequences of that growth factored in. In 2004, Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, announced that the green GDP index would replace the Chinese GDP index itself as a performance measure for government and party officials at the highest levels. The first green GDP accounting report, for 2004, was published in September 2006. It showed that the financial loss caused by pollution was 511.8 billion yuan ($66.3 billion), or 3.05 percent of the nation's economy.[1]
As an experiment in national accounting, the Green GDP effort collapsed in failure in 2007, when it became clear that the adjustment for environmental damage had reduced the growth rate to politically unacceptable levels, nearly zero in some provinces. In the face of mounting evidence that environmental damage and resource depletion was far more costly than anticipated, the government withdrew its support for the Green GDP methodology and suppressed the 2005 report, which had been due out in March, 2007.[2]

The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is a measure of inequalities between men's and women's opportunities in a country. It combines inequalities in three areas: political participation and decision making, economic participation and decision making, and power over economic resources. It is one of the five indicators used by the United Nations Development Programme in its annual Human Development Report.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is an index used to rank countries by level of "human development", which usually also implies whether a country is a developed, developing, or underdeveloped country. The HDI combines normalized measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries worldwide. It is claimed as a standard means of measuring human development—a concept that, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), refers to the process of widening the options of persons, giving them greater opportunities for education, health care, income, employment, etc. The HDI measures a country's development.
Life expectancy is the average number of years of life remaining at a given age.[1] The term is most often used in the human context, but used also in plant or animal ecology[2] and the calculation is based on the analysis of life tables (also known as actuarial tables).
life table (also called a mortality table or actuarial table) is a table which shows, for a person at each age, what the probability is that they die before their next birthday.

its a tax that has to be paid by the companies that are enjoying tax benefits or tax exemption under various schemes.
its mostly targetted to the R&D companies and Export oriented units which enjoy tax emptions.

under this they have to pay a particular amount of MAT, so they come under the tax net.

Value added tax (VAT), or goods and services tax (GST) is a consumption tax levied on any value that is added to a product. In contrast to sales tax, VAT is neutral with respect to the number of passages that there are between the producer and the final consumer; where sales tax is levied on total value at each stage

CENVAT This is a replacement for the earlier MODVAT scheme and is meant for reducing the cascade effect of indirect taxes on finished products. The scheme is a more extensive one with most goods brought under its preview.

MODVAT It stands for Modified Value Added Tax and is a way of giving some relief to the final manufacturers of goods on Excise Duties borne by their suppliers.

Laffer curve is an economic concept used to illustrate the theory that increases in the rate of taxation do not necessarily increase tax revenue. The Laffer curve is central to supply side economics, as it provides an argument for why lowering taxation may actually increase tax revenues.

The twin deficits hypothesis is a concept from macroeconomics that contends that there is a strong link between a national economy's current account balance and its government budget balance.

An economy is deemed to have a double deficit (also known as a twin deficit) if it has a current account deficit and a fiscal deficit. In effect, the economy is borrowing from foreigners in exchange for foreign-made goods. Traditional macroeconomics predicts that persistent double deficits will lead to currency devaluation/depreciation that can be severe and sudden.

The balance of trade is the difference between a nation's exports of goods and services and its imports of goods and services, if all financial transfers and investments and the like are ignored. A nation is said to have a trade deficit if it is importing more than it exports.
In economics, the current account is one of the two primary components of the balance of payments, the other being the capital account. It is the sum of the balance of trade (exports minus imports of goods and services), net factor income (such as interest and dividends) and net transfer payments (such as foreign aid).

A current account surplus increases a country's net foreign assets by the corresponding amount, and a current account deficit does the reverse.

The FRBM Act was enacted by Parliament in 2003 to bring in fiscal discipline. As per the target, revenue deficit, which is revenue expenditure minus revenue receipts, have to be reduced to nil in five years beginning 2004-05. Each year, the government is required to reduce the revenue deficit by 0.5% of the GDP.
The fiscal deficit is required to be reduced to 3% of the GDP by 2008-09.It would mean reduction of fiscal deficit by 0.3 % of GDP every year.
An appropriation bill or running bill is a legislative motion (bill) which authorizes the government to spend money. It is a bill that sets money aside for specific spending.[1] In most democracies, approval of the legislature is necessary for the government to spend money.

Stagflation is an economic situation in which inflation and economic stagnation occur simultaneously and remain unchecked for a period of time

Engel's law is an observation in economics stating that, with a given set of tastes and preferences, as income rises, the proportion of income spent on food falls, even if actual expenditure on food rises. In other words, the income elasticity of demand of food is less than 1.

Galloping Inflation

When the movement of price accelerates rapidly, running
inflation emerges. Running inflation may record more than 100
per cent rise in prices over a decade. Thus, when prices rise by
more than 10 per cent a year, running inflation occurs.
Economists have not described the range of running inflation.
But, we may saythat a double digit inflation of 10-20 per cent
per annum is a running inflation. If it exceeds that figure, it
may be called 'galloping' inflation.
According to Samuelson, when prices are rising at double or
triple digit rates of 20, 100 or 200 per cent a year, the situation is
described as 'galloping' inflation.

cheap money
Credit available at low interest rates (but not lower borrower qualifications). When governments want to encourage business activity to generate employment, they lower the reserve requirements for banks who are able to increase their lending at lower rates and without loss of profit. Also called easy money, it is the opposite of tight money
In economics, hot money refers to funds which flow into a country to take advantage of a favourable interest rate, and therefore obtain higher returns.
What Does Rolling Settlement Mean?
The process of settling security trades on successive dates so that trades executed today will have a settlement date one business day later than trades executed yesterday. This contrasts with account settlement, in which all trades are settled once in a set period of days, regardless of when the trade took place.
Reverse Repo rate is the rate at which Reserve Bank of India (RBI) borrows money from banks. Banks are always happy to lend money to RBI since their money are in safe hands with a good interest. An increase in Reverse repo rate can cause the banks to transfer more funds to RBI due to this attractive interest rates. It can cause the money to be drawn out of the banking system.
Whenever the banks have any shortage of funds they can borrow it from RBI. Repo rate is the rate at which our banks borrow rupees from RBI. A reduction in the repo rate will help banks to get money at a cheaper rate. When the repo rate increases borrowing from RBI becomes more expensive.
Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion
The role and functions of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion primarily include:
 Formulation and implementation of industrial policy and strategies for industrial development in conformity with the development needs and national objectives;
 Monitoring the industrial growth, in general, and performance of industries specifically assigned to it, in particular, including advice on all industrial and technical matters;
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are an agreed set of goals (objectives) that can be achieved if all actors work together and do their part. Poor countries have pledged to govern better, and invest in their people through health care and education. Rich countries have pledged to support them, through aid, debt relief, and fairer trade. The Goals that were formulated in 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit are set to be achieved by 2015. These are not mere development objectives; they encompass universally accepted human values and rights such as freedom from hunger, the right to basic education, the right to health and a responsibility to future generations.

FDI in sectors/activities to the extent permitted under automatic route does not require any prior approval either by the Government or RBI. The investors are only required to notify the Regional Office concerned of RBI within 30 days of receipt of inward remittances and file the required documents with that office within 30 days of issue of shares of foreign investors.

FDI in activities not covered under the automatic route require prior government approval. Approvals of all such proposals including composite proposals involving foreign investment/foreign technical collaboration is granted on the recommendations of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB).

Capital Account Convertibility or CAC is a monetary policy that centers around the ability to conduct transactions of local financial assets into foreign financial assets freely and at market determined exchange rates.[1] It is sometimes referred to as Capital Asset Liberation.
In layman's terms, it is basically a policy that allows the easy exchange of local currency (cash) for foreign currency at low rates.
There is no formal definition of capital account convertibility (CAC). The Tarapore committee set up by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 1997 to go into the issue of CAC defined it as the freedom to convert local financial assets into foreign financial assets and vice versa at market determined rates of exchange.
The Reserve Bank of India was set up on the recommendations of the Hilton Young Commission. The commission submitted its report in the year 1926, though the bank was not set up for nine years.

he Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a proposal by U.S. President Ronald Reagan on March 23, 1983[1] to use ground and space-based systems to protect the United States from attack by strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. The initiative focused on strategic defense rather than the prior strategic offense doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD).

Current account convertibility allows free inflows and outflows for all purposes other than for capital purposes such as investments and loans. In other words, it allows residents to make and receive trade-related payments — receive dollars (or any other foreign currency) for export of goods and services and pay dollars for import of goods and services, make sundry remittances, access foreign currency for travel, studies abroad, medical treatment and gifts etc.

What is Bank rate? Bank Rate is the rate at which central bank of the country (in India it is RBI) allows finance to commercial banks
What is SLR? Every bank is required to maintain at the close of business every day, a minimum proportion of their Net Demand and Time Liabilities as liquid assets in the form of cash, gold and un-encumbered approved securities. The ratio of liquid assets to demand and time liabilities is known as Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR).

Venture capital (also known as VC or Venture) is a type of private equity capital typically provided to early-stage, high-potential, growth companies in the interest of generating a return through an eventual realization event such as an IPO or trade sale of the company

Hundis refer to financial instruments evolved on the Indian sub-continent used in trade and credit transactions. They were used
• as remittance instruments (to transfer funds from one place to another),
• as credit instruments (to borrow money [IOUs]),
• for trade transactions (as bills of exchange).
NABARD is set up as an apex Development Bank with a mandate for facilitating credit flow for promotion and development of agriculture, small-scale industries, cottage and village industries, handicrafts and other rural crafts. 1. Providing refinance to lending institutions in rural areas 2. Bringing about or promoting institutional development and 3. Evaluating, monitoring and inspecting the client banks
A forward contract in the forex market that locks in the price at which an entity can buy or sell a currency on a future date. Also known as "outright forward currency transaction", "forward outright" or "FX forward".

The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, known as NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. It is the largest electronic screen-based equity securities trading market in the United States. With approximately 3,800 companies and corporations, it has more trading volume per hour than any other stock exchange in the world

The Securities and Exchange Board of India was established on April 12, 1992 in accordance with the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992. Functions of Board.
11. (1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, it shall be the duty of the Board to protect the interests of investors in securities and to promote the development of, and to regulate the securities market, by such measures as it thinks fit
The Incremental Capital-Output Ratio (ICOR), is the ratio of investment to growth which equals to 1 divided by the marginal product of capital. The higher the ICOR, the lower the productivity of capital. The ICOR can be thought of as a measure of the inefficiency with which capital is used. In most countries the ICOR is in the neighborhood of 3.

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) was founded on 9th April 1950 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
Gross national income (GNI) comprises the total value produced within a country (i.e. its gross domestic product), together with its income received from other countries (notably interest and dividends), less similar payments made to other countries.
The gross domestic product (GDP) or gross domestic income (GDI) is a basic measure of a country's economic performance and is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a nation in a year
Gross domestic product ('GDP') is defined as the "value of all final goods and services produced in a country in 1 year".[1] On the other hand, Gross National Product (GNP) is defined as the "value of all goods and services produced in a country in one year, plus income earned by its citizens abroad, minus income earned by foreigners in the country".[2] The key difference between the two is that GDP is the total output of a region, e.g. France, and GNP is the total output of all nationals of a region, e.g. French.
NDP: Net domestic product is defined as "gross domestic product (GDP) minus depreciation of capital
Opportunity cost or economic opportunity loss is the value of the next best alternative forgone as the result of making a decision

Council for Economic Mutual Assistance. This
organization known variously as CEMA or COMECON, is
composed of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East
Germany, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, and Rumania.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a company-wide computer software system used to manage and coordinate all the resources, information, and functions of a business from shared
The National Commission on Agriculture, Government of India, first used the term ‘social forestry’ in 1976. It was then that India embarked upon a social forestry project with the aim of taking the pressure off the forests and making use of all unused and fallow land. Government forest areas that are close to human settlement and have been degraded over the years due to human activities needed to be afforested. Trees were to be planted in and around agricultural fields. Plantation of trees along railway lines and roadsides, and river and canal banks were carried out. They were planted in village common land, Government wasteland and Panchayat land.

With the introduction of this scheme the government formally recognised the local communities’ rights to forest resources, and is now encouraging rural participation in the management of natural resources. Through the social forestry scheme, the government has involved community participation, as part of a drive towards afforestation, and rehabilitating the degraded forest and common lands.

Farm forestry
At present in almost all the countries where social forestry programmes have been taken up, both commercial and non commercial farm forestry is being promoted in one form or the other. Individual farmers are being encouraged to plant trees on their own farmland to meet the domestic needs of the family. In many areas this tradition of growing trees on the farmland already exists.
Mega Food Park Scheme proposes a demand driven/pre-marketed model with strong backward/forward linkages and sustainable supply chain. The primary objective of the proposed scheme is to facilitate establishment of integrated value chain, with processing at the core and supported by requisite forward and backward linkages.

A type of farming practiced in semi-arid or dry grassland areas without irrigation using such approaches as fallowing, maintaining a finely broken surface, and growing drought-tolerant crops.

Footloose industry is a general term for an industry that can be placed and located at any location without effect from factors such as resources or transport.
These industries often have spatially fixed costs, which means that the costs of the products do not change despite where the product is assembled. Diamonds and computer chips are some examples of footloose industries.
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a form of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business functions (or processes) to a third-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain.[1]. In the contemporary context, it is primarily used to refer to the outsourcing of services.

Medical tourism (also called medical travel, health tourism or global healthcare) is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of traveling across international borders to obtain health care.

In economics, "dumping" can refer to any kind of predatory pricing. However, the word is now generally used only in the context of international trade law, where dumping is defined as the act of a manufacturer in one country exporting a product to another country at a price which is either below the price it charges in its home market or is below its costs of production.

What is Anti Dumping Duty?

Where any article is exported from any country or territory to India at less than its normal value then upon the importation of such article to India the central Govt. may be notification in the official gazette impose an anti dumping duty not exceeding the margin of dumping in relation to such article.

Countervailing duties (CVDs) are duties imposed under WTO Rules to neutralize the negative effects of other duties. They are imposed when a foreign country subsidizes its exports, hurting domestic producers in the importing country.

Most favoured nation (MFN), is a status awarded by one nation to another in international trade. It means that the receiving nation will be granted all trade advantages — such as low tariffs — that any other nation also receives. In effect, a nation with MFN status will not be treated worse than any other nation with MFN status.

Free trade area is a type of trade bloc, a designated group of countries that have agreed to eliminate tariffs, quotas and preferences on most (if not all) goods and services traded between them. It can be considered the second stage of economic integration. Countries choose this kind of economic integration form if their economical structures are complementary. If they are competitive, they will choose customs union.

The Green Box contains fixed payments to producers for environmental programs, so long as the payments are "decoupled" from current production levels. The Amber Box contains domestic subsidies that governments have agreed to reduce but not eliminate. The Blue Box contains subsidies which can be increased without limit, so long as payments are linked to production-limiting programs

In order to qualify for the “green box”, a subsidy must not distort trade, or at most cause minimal distortion. These subsidies have to be government-funded (not by charging consumers higher prices) and must not involve price support.

The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. Its value is based on a basket of 4 key international currencies, and SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies.

Established in March 1991 as the successor to the Andean Reserve Fund (ARF), the LARF is a regional financial institution having an independent juridical personality. Its functions are to assist in correcting payments imbalances through loans with terms of up to four years and guarantees extended to members, to coordinate their monetary, exchange, and financial policies and to promote the liberalization of trade and payments in the Andean subregion.