Nov/17/2011

Manmohan leaves for Indonesia, Singapore

The Prime Minister will attend the India-ASEAN Summit and East Asia Summit. On the sidelines of these summits, he will have bilateral meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today embarked on a four-day visit to Indonesia and Singapore with an aim of bolstering partnership with East Asia at a time when the U.S. and Europe are going through economic crisis.

Dr. Singh will attend the India-ASEAN Summit and East Asia Summit in Bali in Indonesia with a focus on enhancing trade and investment, connectivity and capacity-building besides discussing security issues.

On the sidelines of these Summits, he will have bilateral meetings with U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

In the second leg of the two-nation tour, Dr. Singh will travel to Singapore on a bilateral visit.

“Partnership with ASEAN is an essential component of our ’Look East’ policy,” the Prime Minister said in his departure statement here today.

He noted that the level of India’s engagement with the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) as a group and with individual ASEAN member states has gone up qualitatively in the last few years.

“This is reflected in the areas of trade and investment, capacity-building, connectivity, people-to-people and institutional linkages,” Dr. Singh said.

He said an ambitious India-ASEAN Plan of Action for 2010-2015 has been agreed upon and “I will review the implementation of the Plan of Action with the ASEAN leaders.”

Next year, India will host the India-ASEAN Summit for the first time to commemorate 20 years of dialogue partnership with ASEAN, Dr. Singh pointed out. “I will have the opportunity to share our ideas for the Commemorative Summit with ASEAN leaders in Bali.”

About the East Asia Summit, Dr. Singh said it was “the principal forum to devise an open and inclusive architecture of regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region.”

This year’s Summit will see the formal entry into the East Asia Summit process of the United States and Russia, he noted.

“As a founding member, India is part of several initiatives taken by the East Asia Summit to create an economic community in the region such as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia (CEPEA),” he said.

He pointed out that increasingly, political and security issues are becoming part of the East Asia Summit agenda.

“There are concerns among the countries of the region over issues relating to disaster management, maritime security, terrorism and other non-traditional threats to security,” he said, adding, “I look forward to an open, frank and productive discussion on all these issues.”

Referring to his first bilateral visit to Singapore on November 19, Singh said he attaches “great importance” to it and looked forward to holding wide-ranging discussions with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on deepening our economic, trade, cultural and people-to-people relations.

“Singapore is a key partner for us in the region. India’s ’Look East’ policy started with our engagement with Singapore, and that country has been among the strongest advocates of greater cooperation between South East Asia and India,” he said.

Singapore is India’s largest trading partner in ASEAN, and the second largest investor in India and was the first country with which India signed a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement in 2005. “Currently, we are in the process of a second review of this Agreement to make it work better for both of us,” he said.

Dr. Singh said he also looked forward to unveiling a Marker and Bust of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in Singapore.

Speaker hopeful of smooth winter session

With the Opposition planning to target the government on issues like corruption, price rise, Lokpal and caste census through various ways including adjournment motions, the upcoming winter session of Parliament from next week is all set to be stormy.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, who chaired an all-party meeting here on Thursday, however, said that the general refrain of the parties was that the session should run smoothly and they have promised their cooperation.

Describing the discussions in the all party meeting as “very fruitful”, Ms. Kumar said all leaders were “very keen” that the House transacts all business including passage of bills during the 21-day session.

She said the Opposition parties came out with 45 issues that they wanted to be discussed during the session. Though some of the parties felt that the session’s duration is too short to take up so many issues, Ms. Kumar said no demand to extend the number of sittings was made.

Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj said her party wanted specific discussions on making public the list of Indian black money account holders abroad, food inflation, Telangana and recent developments in Indo-Pak relations after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s SAARC visit.

She said there was hardly any dispute between the Government and the Opposition about discussion on issues, but only on the manner in which the discussions should be held.

CPI General Secretary Gurudas Dasgupta said his party would bring an adjournment motion to discuss “failure” of the government to implement the unanimous resolution of the House on price rise adopted in the last session.

'Malaria endemic in 10 South-East Asian countries'

The fourth Andhra Pradesh Science Congress 2011, jointly organised by the Andhra Pradesh Akademy of Sciences and GITAM University concluded here on Wednesday.

Chairman of Board of Governors of NIT, Warangal and Padma Shri awardee Prof. B.L. Deekshitulu was chief guest.

Distinguished Scientist of NGRI and President of Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences Padmasri Vijay Prasad Dimri, Secretary and Director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology Ch. Mohan Rao, Vice-Chancellor of GITAM University G. Subrahmanyam, chairman of organising committee of the AP Science Congress N. Lakshmana Das, secretary K. Ramakrishna, UGC Coordinator Ch. Ramakrishna and others participated in the function. The Science Congress discussed various research findings of reputed Central research organisations. Around 500 delegates including scientists from various research organisations participated in the congress.

Chief Scientist of Indian Institute of Chemical Technology's Biology Division U.S.N. Murthy said that 10 countries in the South-East Asia region were endemic to malaria and approximately 60 per cent of the total population in the region is at some risk of malaria, with 20 per cent at high risk.

MAJOR CONCERN

India contributes around 76 per cent of total malaria cases from this region particularly. Malaria was a major public health concerns in the North Eastern States among which Arunachal Pradesh was considered as highly malaria endemic, Prof. Murthy said. He said that the recent IICT studies developed a model to assess malaria incidence with reference to climate change. He revealed that the current model of malaria Dr. S.K. Shankar from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences stressed the need for establishment of a brain bank for collection and distribution of standardised human brain tissue collected at autopsy. The geographic, ethnic and genetic differences exist in human biology and knowledge from the West could not be extrapolated to orientals and unique features needed to be identified. This was possible only by promoting, nurturing and contributing to the human brain bank as a National facility and optimally utilising the resources for research, Dr. Shankar said.

A research group of the CCMB, headed by S. Shivaji, in a paper on ‘Do life forms survive at subzero temperatures? A study of Antarctic flora and fauna', informed that it had identified several cold loving bacteria. An expert from DRDE, the DRDO's establishment at Gwalior, M.V.S. Suryanarayana, and Department of Atomic Energy's Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research wing expert K. Umamaheswar presented papers.

Bus fares, power tariff, milk price go up in TN

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Thursday announced revision of bus fares, power tariff and milk prices, citing the State's poor financial condition.

In an address televised on a private channel, Jaya TV, and later released to other media, she said mounting debts, the poor condition in which public sector undertakings were left by the previous DMK regime and the Centre's "step-motherly attitude" towards Tamil Nadu forced her to go in for revision of prices.

The State electricity board would file a tariff application before the Electricity Regulatory Commission for revision of power tariff, she said, but made it clear that free power supply for irrigation pumpsets, weavers and dwellings with a single light bulb would not be affected. Further, except those who consume high quantum of power, most domestic consumers would also be protected from tariff revision, and the government would continue to bear the subsidy burden for these categories.

In the transport sector, there was no alternative to an upward revision of fares, Ms. Jayalalithaa said. In ordinary mofussil buses, the ticket price would go up from 28 paise per km to 42 paise, while fares on express and semi-deluxe buses would be raised from 32 paise to 56 paise per km. There would be a corresponding increase in super deluxe (38 paise to 60 paise per km) and ultra deluxe (from 52 to 70 paise) buses.

City bus fares would also go up. The minimum ticket price in cities would go up from Rs 2 to Rs. 3 and the maximum would be Rs 12 instead of Rs. 7. In Chennai, the minimum fare would go up to Rs 3 and the maximum would be Rs. 14. Even after such revision, transport bus fares would be much lower than in other Southern States, Ms. Jayalalithaa said.

She also announced a steep rice in the price of milk supplied by 'Aavin'. The price of toned milk would be revised from Rs. 17.75 paise per litre to Rs 24.

Correspondingly, the procurement price of milk paid to dairy farmers would raised from Rs 18 to Rs 20 per litre for cow's milk and from Rs 26 to Rs 28 per litre for buffalo milk.