Civil Services' Surgicals

  FEATURE SJE A demographic revolution is taking place throughout the world indicating a phenomenal rise in the population of the elderly. According to a UN estimate, the population of the people aged 60 years and above is expected to grow to 1.2 billion by 2025 and to 2 billion by 2050. Today, about two thirds of all the older people are living in the developing world. As per the Census 2001, in India, there were 77 million persons above 60 years constituting 7.5% of the total population of the country. This number is projected to go up to  12.4% of the population in 2026.  Such an increase obviously will throw up numerous challenges in designing old age specific programmes and schemes and addressing their issues in a comprehensive manner.   The Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment  announced a National Policy for Older Persons in January, 1999. This policy reaffirmed the commitment of the Gove...

    FEATURE Tourism Dr. K. Parameswaran * The International Ecotourism Society has defined Ecotourism as the "responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the welfare of local people". The Australian Commission on National Ecotourism Strategy defines ecotourism as "nature-based tourism that involves education and interpretation of the natural environment and is managed to be ecologically sustainable". In modern times, eco tourism has been expected to help in achieving the following also: involve travel to natural destinations, minimize impact on natural resources, build up environmental awareness, provide impetus and financial support for conservation, financially benefit and empower local people and inculcate respect for local culture. A travel enthusiast from Kanyakumari in Tamilnadu and an avid practitioner of eco tourism guidelines,  R N Kesavaperumal  says that "ecotourism, to be worthy of i...

The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has  said that the size and diversity of the Indian landscape adds to the difficulty of finding solutions. A population of 1.25 billion dispersed over 4,635 communities 78 percent of whom are not only linguistic and cultural but social categories. The human diversities are both hierarchical and spatial. ‘The de jure  WE, the sovereign people is in reality a fragmented ‘we’, divided by yawning gaps that remain to be bridged.’ Around 30 per cent of our people live below the official poverty line and the health and education indicators, for the population as a whole, despite recent correctives, leave much to be desired. Delivering the Annual Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture on ‘Physical Integration and Emotional Inconsonance’ organized by All India Radio (AIR) here yesterday, he said that there are, in addition, problems arising out of Naxalism and insurgency in some areas where the writ of the State runs in name only, demands for a...

(Article originally posted on BookAdda blog  ) And The Winner Is…! By  RIDHI MALHOTRA  |  Published:  OCTOBER 22, 2012 This literary award season was officially launched with the declaring of Chinese author Mo Yan as the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature. At BOOKADDA, we’ve reviewed the literary award winners of 2012. The creative works have been judged the best of their kind. What is your take on their win? Tell us in the comments! 1. The 2012 Man Booker Prize The winner of the Man Booker Prize is chosen from a shortlist of six books authored by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Each of the six shortlisted writers is awarded £2,500 and a specially commissioned beautifully hand-bound edition of his/her book. The winner receives £50,000. The judges took nine months to come to a conclusion. This definitely wasn’t easy. The scrutiny involved hard work, reading and re-reading of books at least three times by the judges and waiting...

Why a little, in moderation, may be beneficial Chocolate has gotten a lot of media coverage in recent years because it's believed that it may help protect your cardiovascular system. The reasoning being that the cocoa bean is rich in a class of plant nutrients called flavonoids. Flavonoids help protect plants from environmental toxins and help repair damage. They can be found in a variety of foods, such as fruits and vegetables. When we eat foods rich in flavonoids, it appears that we also benefit from this "antioxidant" power. Antioxidants are believed to help the body's cells resist damage caused by free radicals that are formed by normal bodily processes, such as breathing, and from environmental contaminants, like cigarette smoke. If your body does not have enough antioxidants to combat the amount of oxidation that occurs, it can become damaged by free radicals. For example, an increase in oxidation can cause low-density lipoprotein (LDL), also known as ...

  FEATURE MSME                                                                                  Jacob Abraham*             All over the world hard wood becomes a scarce commodity.  The furniture manufacturers are vigorously searching for an ecofriendly alternative to wood.  The National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST) at Thiruvananthapuram, a constituent laboratory of CSIR has developed the technology to make wood substitute from natural fibre polymer comp...

    FEATURE Env . & Forests                                                                                            The country level tiger population, estimated once in every four years using the refined methodology, has shown an increasing trend with a population estimate of 1706, lower and upper limits being 1520 and 1909 respectively in the recent all India estimation (2010), as compared to the last country level estimation of 2006, with an estimate of 1411, lower and upper limits being 1165 and 16...

FEATURE Post Project Arrow is an initiative to transform India Post into a vibrant and responsive organization and to make a visible and positive difference in postal operations to benefit the customers.  It has been launched with objective of modernizing the post and makes visible, tangible and noteworthy differences in the post office operations that matter to “Aam Aadmi”.

    FEATURE Commerce                                                                                            Amit   Guin * The Government of India opened the floodgates for foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail trading, on September 14, 2012; thereby boosting the investors’ confidence  towards  the Indian market and economy. The government, thus, decided to give green signal to FDI up to 51 per cent, under the government route, in multi-brand retail trading. It was clearly ...

   FEATURE   Heavy Industry               Change is the only universal constant.  This is also quite evident in the global automotive industry and can be seen with regards to the products, consumer choice, markets, technology and the competitive paradigms that govern this sector.  The changing world order in the automotive space can be categorized around a few important broad themes – “emergence of new markets and opportunities”, “enhanced concerns over sustainable growth”, “the competitive paradigms of the future”.

    FEATURE SJE Sarita Brara*       “I have learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” said poet Maya Angellou.        And this is what Antarchakshu seeks to do through a programme aimed at sensitizing the general public as well policy makers about the issues related to the mainstreaming of the visually challenged.  In a novel initiative Antarakshu seeks to engages people from all walks of life in different activities and tasks blindfolded for about half an hour to open the eyes of the sighted to the world of the visually challenged. The aim of this awareness programme is to remove the prejudices, myths and misconceptions about the capabilities of the visually challenged with or without technical aides in the areas of education and employment and financial transactions and give them firsthan...

( By : Rugved Thakur ) Answer writing is the key to getting good marks in Main Examination. 2 Main areas of concentration should be Meeting expectation of UPSC answering style and Presentation. When an answer requires 250 words or more, it is better to prepare  synoptic notes  in rough. This involves quickly jotting down the main points we are to write in the answer. Arranging the points in order of importance. This gives a good structure and flow to the answer. Try as far as possible to stick to the word limit mentioned in the question. Good control over language will help you to write more points in lesser number of words. Read the editorials of the newspaper and try to use that language in your answers. Exceeding the word limit may lead to problems in completing the paper. There is no need to count the exact number of words in the answer. During preparation itself one should know the length of the page that one needs to write for a 100, 200, 250, 300 and 600 words...

FEATURE Agriculture Sant Bahadur*                  Dairy sector in  India   has acquired substantial growth momentum from 9th Plan onwards, producing 121.8 million tonne milk during 2010-11.  Per capita availability of milk reached 269 grams per day in 2010-11. This has not only placed the country on top of milk producing countries in the world, but also demonstrated sustained growth in the availability of milk and milk products for the burgeoning population.

FEATURE Minority Affairs     Sapna * The Prime Minister’s New 15-Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities is an initiative of the Government to bring the people of minority classes in the mainstream of development.  This Programme for the Welfare of Minorities was announced in June, 2006 under the Ministry of Minority Affairs to ensure a more focused approach towards issues relating to the minorities. The purpose was to facilitate the formulation of overall policy and planning, coordination, evaluation and review of the regulatory framework and development programmes for the benefit of the minority communities.

INFO-NUGGETS FINANCE Shamima   Siddiqui *                  The Government has adopted a five-pronged strategy to tackle the sensitive issue of Black Money – Joining the Global Crusade  Against  Black Money ·            Issues of tax evasion and Exchange of Information have been incorporated in G 20 communiqué due to efforts of India in the recent ministerial meetings. ·            India is playing a key role in Global Forum on Transfer Pricing and Exchange of Information for tax purpose, as Vice Chairman of Peer Review Group. ·            Joined FATF, Task Force on financial integrity and Economic Development and Eurasian Group. ·            India is par...