Indian Current Affairs | Current Affairs India - April 2012

India Water Week
The Ministry of Water Resources since this year has endeavoured to celebrate India Water Week annually as an international event to focus on water issues. It would provide a global platform for water related issues that will bring policy makers, industry leaders, experts, professionals and practitioners together to address the challenges, showcase technologies, discover opportunities, recognizing the excellence of professionals/organizations and celebrate their achievements. The first international event in the series of India Water Week on “Water, Energy and Food Security: Call for Solutions” will be organized during April 10-14.

MoHFW launches “Swasth Bharat” series on World Health Day
On the occasion of the World Health Day (April-7), the Union Health & Family Welfare Ministiry launched a health magazine programme called “Swasth Bharat “ to be telecast through 30 regional kendras of Doordarshan and 29 stations of All India Radio covering 27 states.

India Statistical Strengthening Project
India Statistical Strengthening Project (ISSP) is a comprehensive Project of the Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, Government of India, designed to strengthen State Statistical Systems by way of providing adequate technical and financial support to improve their statistical capacity and infrastructure for collecting, compiling and disseminating reliable official statistics for policy planning purposes, particularly at the State and Sub-State levels. With proper and effective implementation of ISSP, it is hoped that there would be a significant improvement in the relevance, utility, user-friendliness, adequacy, credibility, timeliness and reliability of state, sub-state and in turn, the national level data. ISSP has been initiated in the 11th Plan period as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme, with an approved outlay of Rs.650.43 crores, of which 80% was funded through a World Bank Loan and 20% borne by the Government of India.

Frequent Change of CRR
Since 26.4.2010, the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) has been changed twice by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as per details given below.
28.01.2012 - Reduced from 6 per cent to 5.5 per cent
10.03.2012 - Reduced from 5.5 per cent to 4.75 per cent
The main purpose of reducing the CRR is injection of primary liquidity in the system so as to assist the flow of credit growth to the productive sectors of economy, mitigate the downside risks  to growth and anchoring the medium term expectations to low and stable inflation.

Per Capita Income
The Minister of State for Statistics and Programme Implementation Shri Srikant Kumar Jena has said that the Per Capita Income at current prices at the national level, stands at Rs. 60,972 in the year 2011-12, vis-à-vis Rs. 53,331 in the year 2010-11, showing an increase of 14.3% during last year. The regional imbalance and disparity among various States and UTs in the country is largely due to historical difference in initial conditions, natural resource endowments, level of industrialization and differences in human capital indicators viz. education, health, etc. Per capita income is only an indicator of disparity and not the cause. 

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