CURRENT AFFAIRS INDIA AND WORLD

Achieve integration: Manmohan
• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh exhorted the East Asia Summit (EAS) in HANOI to move
beyond making policy declarations and dealing with immediate challenges to greater functional
cooperation. Speaking at the Fifth EAS summit, the Prime Minister defined the overall goal of
forging a wider Asian community as achieving integration on economic, political, security,
social and cultural issues.
• Dwelling on the world economic situation ahead of G-20 summit in Seoul, he termed the
recovery as fragile.
• This required “firm resistance” to new protectionist measures in industrialised countries and
reduction of existing barriers to trade. Protectionism was not the answer to trade and balance of
payments problems, he added.
• The EAS is a grouping of 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) and its
six dialogue partner countries — China, Japan, South Korea, India, New Zealand and Australia
— to which the U.S. and Russia have been added at this meet.
• Dr. Singh welcomed the first meeting of the Asean Defence Ministers-plus-eight in Hanoi
earlier this month and said India supported “practical and pragmatic cooperation” through this
new forum.
Breaking records, Shanghai Expo closes doors
• The Shanghai Expo, the biggest world's fair in history, closed its doors after breaking a number
of records during its six month-long opening. The Expo, on which the Shanghai government
spent an estimated $ 45 billion, dwarfing what Beijing spent on the Olympics, has been the
most expensive and well-attended in the 159-year history of the world's fair.
• The event had received more than 73 million visitors, breaking the record set by Osaka, Japan,
in 1970, which received 64 million visitors.
• Among the popular pavilions of the 190 countries that participated were Saudi Arabia's - which
was the most expensive after China's, and had the world's largest IMAX screen - and the United
Kingdom's, a giant porcupine-like structure with 60,000 rods containing seeds, which will be
distributed across China's villages. These were among the 34 pavilions that were selected as the
best at the Expo. Others on the list were Germany, Chile and Sweden.
• India's $ 10 million pavilion did not make it to the list, though the pavilion's organisers consoled
themselves with a brief visit from Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.
India seeks a relationship of equals with U.S., says Menon
• Speaking ahead of President Barack Obama's visit amid a controversy over whether Washington
informed New Delhi of Lashkar operative David Headley's reconnaissance missions before the
Mumbai attacks, National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon maintained that existing
counter-terrorism cooperation between India and the U.S. was unprecedented compared to the
period five years ago.
• Speaking at a seminar on Indo-U.S. ties organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of
Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the NSA said bilateral cooperation in hi-tech trade, including
in dual use items, had reached critical mass.

Mr. Menon described India's foreign policy as “genuine non-alignment” and said better India-
U.S. ties would not impact either India-China or China-U.S. relations because this was “not a
binary world.” He said India sought a relationship of “equals” with the U.S. and was “very
optimistic” of the future.
• On U.S. export control laws, the NSA said Washington had gradually changed the regime since
the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership was signed in 2004 which was followed by the setting
up of the High Technology Cooperation Group the following year. This now reached “critical
mass” with some high-tech transfers from the U.S. to India being better than what Washington's
closer allies such as the U.K got.
• Brookings president Strobe Talbott was of the opinion that India and the U.S. must adjust a little
to make effective contributions at G-20. The U.S. needed to “wean away a bit” from G-7 and
India should similarly wean itself away from G-77 and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Bangladesh to charge India only transit fee
• Bangladeshi Finance Minister A.M.A. Muhith has opposed duty for allowing transit to India,
but said a certain fee will be charged for transporting goods through the country.
• He added that Bangladesh was geographically “a transit country and those who deny it are
fools.”
• “The government is going to formulate a guideline to determine the transit fee,” he said, adding
that there is currently a protocol only for waterways and railways. Bangladesh receives about
Bangladeshi Taka 5.5 billion for water transit from India.
Ivanov to head India-Russia panel
• Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov has been appointed to head the Russian part of the Indo-
Russian Inter-Governmental Commission (IRIGC) for trade, economic, scientific-technical and
cultural cooperation.
• A decree signed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Mr. Ivanov was replacing the former
Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Sobyanin, who last month became the Mayor of Moscow.
• Mr. Ivanov's appointment is good news for the defence establishments both in India and Russia.
• As Russia's Defence Minister in 2001-2007, he co-chaired the IRIGC for military-technical
cooperation and helped formulate Russia's arms export strategy, which calls for the supply of
the most cutting-edge defence technologies to India, while exercising extreme discretion in
selling weapons to China.
Two Indian American doctors win in U.S. polls
• Two Indian-American doctors belonging to the Republican Party have won State Congressional
elections.
• Dr. Prasad Srinivasan won the 31st district of the Connecticut State House of Representatives
and Dr. Janak Joshi secured victory in the 14th district of the Colorado State House of
Representatives, said the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI).Both are
Republicans.
U.S., India ‘constructing paradigm beyond Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty'
• In committing itself to supporting India's full membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group and
other multilateral export control regimes, the Obama administration has finally opened a door
for the country to transcend the legal confines of a treaty that has defined global attitudes
towards nuclear weapons for over four decades: the NPT.
• The American decision to support India's membership in the NSG, the Missile Technology

Control Regime, the Australian Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement was made public by
Deputy National Security Adviser Mike Froman and is conditional on these clubs deciding, by
consensus, to change their rules on who can join.
• The current membership rules of the NSG, though not formally stated, require adherence to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or a regional nuclear weapons free zone (which in turn
requires NPT membership). And the same treaty requirement applies in the case of the MTCR
and the Wassenaar Arrangement — a cartel of 40 states which governs the export of
conventional weapons and dual-use goods and technologies. But Mr. Froman said the U.S.
would “encourage the evolution of a membership criteria of these regimes consistent with
maintaining their core principles.”
• The Bush administration's initiatives from 2005 to 2008 saw the U.S. helping to peel away
export restrictions that were never originally a part of the NPT itself. That is why the NSG was
able to give India an exemption from its export restrictions without getting into the trickier issue
of what India's legal status in relation to the treaty actually was. But with NSG membership
essentially tied to the NPT, any new joining criteria will effectively establish for nuclear-armed
India — in clearer legal terms than anything else so far has done — a parallel status equivalent
to that of the five nuclear weapons states which are part of the NPT.
• Apart from easing Indian access to sensitive high technology items, membership of these clubs
— “which will come in a phased manner” — will give New Delhi a say in their rule-making
process. Under the terms of the NSG's 2008 waiver, India is today in the anomalous position of
being obligated to abide by future guidelines that NSG and even MTCR members may adopt
without being part of their formal decision-making process. The MTCR deals the export of
missiles with a range greater than 300 kilometres while the Australian Group regulates the
export of materials that could be used for manufacturing chemical and biological weapons.
Changes in U.S. export control laws reflect present reality: India
• The declaration of an export control reform package made by a senior U.S. official
accompanying President Barack Obama would lead to greater exchanges in high-tech trade and
dual-use items. It would also bring to a virtual close a five-year-long process that began with
the formation of the High Technology Cooperation Group.
• “The export control reform package being announced is that we will remove India's defence and
space-related entities from the U.S. entity list. The list at one point had, I believe, 220 Indian
entities on it. And there are only four left. And today we will be announcing a removal of three.
They are the organisations under Defence Research and Development Organisation [DRDO],
the four subordinates under the Indian Space and Research Organisation [ISRO], and Bharat
Dynamics Limited [BDL],” observed Deputy National Security Advisor for International
Economic Affairs Mike Froman.
• “Removing these entities from the list will allow for greater trade and cooperation in civilian
space and defence, and enable our governments to focus on other outstanding barriers that
hinder the expansion of bilateral high-tech trade. And this is a very significant step forward,” he
added.
India elected to key U.N. panel
• India has been elected to a key committee that controls the purse strings of the United Nations,
which has an annual budget of nearly $22 billion.
• Namgya Khampa, serving in the Indian mission to the U.N., was elected to the 16-member
Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) for a three-year
term.
• ACABQ performs several functions including the examination of the budget submitted by the
U.N. Secretary-General to the General Assembly and advising the Assembly on administrative
and budgetary matters referred to it.
• India got the highest number of 164 votes out of a total of 570, which according to Hardeep
Singh Puri, India's envoy to the U.N., is the highest number of votes received by a candidate.
In a first, India, U.S. for dialogue of all nuclear weapon states
• The United States has become the first nuclear weapons state (NWS) as defined by the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty to endorse the idea of talks between the five NWSs and the three
nuclear-armed nations outside the NPT, i.e. India, Pakistan and Israel.
• Until now, the U.S. has remained firmly wedded to the NPT framework and structures — or to
bilateral forums with other NWSs like Russia — for all dialogues related to nuclear weapons.
Others like China have also been reluctant to engage in any discussion with India on nuclear
strategic issues such as no first use, risk reduction and confidence-building measures.
• What Mr. Obama and Dr. Singh envisage, however, is a framework which will bring all eight
countries possessing nuclear weapons together for a dialogue on building trust and confidence,
a major step in the direction of harmonising the NPT, which the three outsiders will never sign,
with the wider aim of “universal and non-discriminatory global nuclear disarmament in the 21st
century.”
• In doing so, India and the U.S. have assembled the basic building blocks of a framework which
has the potential to transcend the NPT, while remaining faithful to the twin goals of nonproliferation
and the elimination of nuclear weapons.
• The joint statement also says the U.S. intends to support India's full membership in the Nuclear
Suppliers Group and Missile Technology Control Regime in a phased manner “and to consult
with regime members to encourage the evolution of regime membership criteria, consistent with
maintaining the core principles of these regimes,” as the Indian government simultaneously
moves ahead with coming into conformity with these regimes' export control requirements.
U.S., India sign MoU for global diseases detection
• The United States and India signed a Memorandum of Understanding on establishing and
operationalising a Global Diseases Detection Centre in New delhi
• The agreement will facilitate the development of human resources, both in epidemiology and
research, enable sharing of best practices for detection of and response to emerging infections,
wherever required.The MoU would be implemented through an agreed plan between the
National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), India, and the Centres for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), Atlanta.
• It would also facilitate advanced training in the fields of epidemiology, surveillance for
emerging infectious diseases, and the health and mentoring of public health professionals
internationally.
• The MoU also aims to build laboratory capacity in India for the diagnosis of emerging
infectious diseases using well characterised reference material and advanced technology
transfer.
• The GDD programme was established in 2004 to rapidly detect and contain emerging health
threats.
• There are currently six regional centres across the world with varying capacity levels. These areat Guatemala, Kazakhstan, China, Thailand, Egypt and Kenya. India will host the seventh
centre.
India, U.S. sign pact on clean technologies
• India and the United States signed an agreement to establish a virtual centre to promote
research, development and deployment in the area of clean energy technologies.
• Under the pact, the two countries would each contribute $5 million every year for supporting
collaborative R&D projects involving academics and private sectors of both nations.
• The pact will initially be valid for 10 years and can be renewed for blocks of five years at a
time.
• It will work in the consortia mode. Each consortium will comprise entities or individuals from
national laboratories, academic institutions, the private sector, non-governmental organisations,
and other stakeholders, who have the requisite knowledge and expertise of undertaking first-rate
programmes.
• Initially, the focus will be on solar energy, second generation bio-fuels and energy efficiency of
buildings. Each consortium will be responsible for establishing its own internal governance
structure.
China for “patient consultations” on UNSC reforms
• China favours “democratic and patient consultations” on the question of reforming the United
Nations Security Council, the government said a day after United States President Barack
Obama endorsed a permanent seat for India on an expanded UNSC.
• While China supported “reasonable and necessary” reforms which “give priority to developing
countries,” the Foreign Ministry said it “understood India's aspirations” to play a greater role in
the UN, reiterating its position of not directly supporting India's candidature.
• Asked about U.S. support for India's full membership of the 46-member Nuclear Suppliers
Group (NSG), Mr. Hong said China's position was that “countries, under [the] precondition of
respecting international obligations of non proliferation, have the right to make peaceful use of
nuclear energy and conduct international cooperation.”
• China now remains the only country among the five permanent members of the UNSC which
has not directly voiced support for India's bid. Since 2005, it has said it “understood and
supported India's aspirations,” but not specifically its bid, to have a greater voice in the UN and
the UNSC.
• Notwithstanding Mr. Obama's endorsement, the reform process is likely to remain long drawn
out – the U.S. had much earlier voiced unambiguous support to Japan's candidature. “From
1995 to 2005, and from 2005 to 2010, for 15 years, all efforts to reform the UNSC have failed,”
Mr. Shen said. “I don't think in the next 15 years, any efforts to reform the UNSC would
succeed.”
Difference of opinion at G-20 summit over what ails the global economy
• As a further indication of the fact that the pre-Summit negotiations of the G-20 are not going
very smoothly, India has said that “there are no universally agreed upon diagnoses of what ails
the global economy.”
• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conveyed this to British Prime Minister David Cameron, and
President Philip Calderon of Mexico during his bilateral meetings with them. This indicates that
it disagrees with the United States' perception that only China's current account and capital
account surpluses are to blame for the global economic predicament.
• Dr. Singh also met the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in a bilateral meeting.
• The American decision to pump in $600 billion over the next few months has left everyone

jumpy as to the consequences for their economies.
• Brazil has already spoken out sharply against this. A Chinese official said on television that if
America catches a cold it can't look for Chinese medicines.
• China has already taken pre-emptive action against capital surges by asking Chinese banks to
deposit more money with the Central bank. Many G-20 members have already put sand in the
machine so that destabilising dollar inflows do not cause problems for them.
India on U.N. women panel
• India has been elected to the board of a new U.N. agency to promote equality for women .
• U.N. Women is the amalgamation of different United Nations bodies focused on women. It was
created this year to look exclusively at gender equality and empowerment of women.
• The 41-member executive board also includes the U.S. and Britain, which won seats in the
donor nations category.
After Obama visit, India set to play ball with U.S. rivals
• If Barack Obama's triumphant visit here gave the world the impression that the Manmohan
Singh government was drawing too close to the United States, the Russia-India-China (RIC)
Foreign Ministers meeting in Wuhan will serve as a reminder that India is still willing to play
ball with powers that see themselves as rivals to America.
• “The timing of the Wuhan trilateral is fortunate because it allows us to do a bit of a
repositioning exercise,” a senior Indian official told. “Both Russia and China and everyone else
will be able to see that we have not given up pursuing all our other interests just because our
relations with the U.S. have improved.”
• Russia, which once unambiguously backed India for a permanent seat now speaks of the need
for U.N. reform “by consensus,” while the Chinese have been willing to support India's
aspirations only in a general way.
• India will be represented at Wuhan by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Foreign
Secretary Nirupama Rao.
• The trilateral meeting — the tenth since the format was launched in 2002. Ms. Rao will then
move on to Beijing for the next round of the India-China Strategic Dialogue.
German envoy refutes Jairam's remarks
• Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh's remark about “criminal gas guzzlers” has irked the
German embassy, and provoked Ambassador Thomas Matussek into delivering a statement in
defence of his country's auto technology.
• Speaking at a workshop on promoting low-carbon transport , Mr. Ramesh criticised the owners
of large cars, “BMWs, Benzs and Hondas” as having become the real beneficiaries of diesel
subsidy that was meant to benefit poor farmers. Both BMW and Mercedes Benz are German
firms.
Security to top RIC agenda
• Security in the Asia-Pacific region will dominate the agenda of the 10th Russia-India-China
(RIC) triangle meeting at the level of Foreign Ministers, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.
• “The focus of the meeting will be questions of the formation in the Asia-Pacific region of a new,
improved security and cooperation architecture and the role of the RIC in the system of
multilateral regional associations,” said the Russian Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman Andrei
Nesterenko ahead of the RIC meeting in Wuhan, China, on November 14-15.

U.S.-India pact to better monsoon forecasts
• India's monsoon forecasting is expected to improve with its entering into a new agreement with
the United States.
• The agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and
India's Ministry of Earth Sciences is part of a series of food security agreements formalised
during President Barack Obama's visit.
• “The Monsoon Agreement, by striving to improve long-range monsoon prediction, holds great
potential to improve the well-being of the people of India, while also benefitting the United
States and other nations through improvements in their own seasonal climate forecasts,” said
NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.
• India experiences monsoon weather, typically resulting in six months of rain beginning in early
June. But it is difficult to predict when the monsoon will begin, how strong it will be or when it
will end — information that can help plan for seasonal crops and project surface water supplies.

India tells China: Kashmir is to us what Tibet, Taiwan are to you
• Drawing a dramatic parallel between the territorial red lines of both countries, India told China
that just as New Delhi had been sensitive to its concerns over the Tibet Autonomous Region and
Taiwan, Beijing too should be mindful of Indian sensitivities on Jammu and Kashmir.
• The comparison – which is intended to drive home the depth of Indian concerns over recent
Chinese attempts to question the country's sovereignty in Kashmir — was made by External
Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna in his meeting with China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the
sidelines of the Russia-India-China trilateral meeting.This is the first time India has drawn this
parallel directly.

Meeting to prepare for Manmohan-Medvedev summit
• A joint civilian aircraft programme and greater cooperation in accessing Russia's energy
resources will come up at a high level meeting between Prime Minster Manmohan Singh and
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in December, official sources in the Ministry of External
Affairs (MEA) said.The annual summit takes place 10 years after both countries elevated their
ties to the level of strategic partnership. Called the Inter-Governmental Commission on Trade,
Economic, Scientific, Technical, Economic and Cultural Cooperation, the meeting will be cochaired
by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei
Ivanov.
• This is the second of the two high-level committees that review past decisions and chalk out the
future course of action.
• The other is the Inter-Governmental Joint Commission on Military and Technical Cooperation
co-chaired by the two Defence Ministers. “Both constitute vital institutional mechanisms to
oversee all aspects of significant cooperation,'' noted MEA spokesperson Vishnu Prakash.
• Trade, the bane of India-Russia ties, has started looking up due to focussed attention by the two
governments. Despite global recession, bilateral trade went up last year and grew 24 per cent
during the first seven months of the current fiscal.
• Recent initiatives include Trade and Commerce Minister Anand Sharma leading a sizeable
business team to St. Petersburg which was preceded by the meeting of India-Russia CEOs
Forum headed on the Indian side by Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani and by
Sistema chief Vladimir Evtushenkov on the Russian side.
• In petroleum, the ONGC Videsh is poised to invest five per cent equity in the bidding for gas in
Yamal Peninsula and India hopes to use the political goodwill, accentuated by Russian Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin's interest, to become a prominent stakeholder in this asset, said the
sources.
• India was also hoping to participate in the development of Russia's recently openend strategic
reserves in Timan-Pechora province — Trebs and Titov oil deposits — but suffered a setback.

Be wary of China project, Gogoi urges Centre
• Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi urged the Centre to keep a strong vigil on a possible
downstream impact of a dam of a 510 MW project constructed by China at Zangmu in the
middle reaches of the Brahmaputra or the Yarlung Tsangpo, as it is known in Tibet.
• 2,000 MW Subonsiri Lower Hydroelectric project of the NHPC at Gerukamukh in Arunachal
Pradesh is being built.
Religious freedom not fully enforced in India: U.S. report
• While legal protections against violations of religious freedom exist in India, corruption and
lack of trained police led to the laws not always being enforced rigorously, according to a
United States State Department report.
• In the International Religious Freedom Report 2010, the State Department said despite
government efforts to foster communal harmony, extremist groups continued to view
“ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities” as a signal that
they could commit such violence with impunity.
• It argued that some State and local governments also limited religious freedom by maintaining
or enforcing existing anti-conversion legislation and by not efficiently or effectively prosecuting
those who attacked religious minorities. In particular, it noted there were active anti-conversion
laws in six of the 28 States — Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya
Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh.
India for ‘structured dialogue mechanism' in Sri Lanka
• External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, on a four-day visit to Sri Lanka, said India hoped for
the creation of a ‘structured dialogue mechanism' to work out a political solution to the ethnic
conflict in the island nation.
• It is for the first time that India has publicly articulated its desire for a planned mechanism to
carry forward the dialogue in the quest for resolution of the ethnic conflict.

Syria pins hopes on India to highlight Arab cause at U.N. Security Council
• For Syria, India's upcoming non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Councilpresents an opportunity. And the Syrian leadership lost no opportunity to underscore this.
• “Based on our great knowledge of the great influence of India, we in Syria,” Mr. Assad said,
“welcome an active Indian role in creating an environment conducive to the achievement of just
and comprehensive peace in our region.” Syria, he added, looked forward to help from India —
which had always supported the Arab legitimate rights, including the return of the Golan
Heights and the cause of Palestine — “in achieving peace based on international legitimacy
resolutions and the land for peace principle.”
• Earlier, at President Patil's meeting with Syrian Prime Minister Naji Ali Otri on Saturday, he
expressed satisfaction at India's participation in power projects in Syria, particularly the upgrade
of the Tishreen Power Plant by BHEL, financed through an Indian line of credit for $240
million and ONGC Videsh Limited's participation in the exploration of hydrocarbons, Secretary
(East) Vijaya Latha Reddy said.
Krishna sees commercial potential in Hambantota
• External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna on Sunday inaugurated the office of the Indian consulate
in Hambantota, the coastal town in the south and home constituency of Sri Lankan President
Mahinda Rajapaksa.
• Hambantota has been in the news recently for the giant port project built with the help of China.
• The inauguration was last on the action-packed agenda of Mr. Krishna during his four-day visit
to the island nation.