27 APRIL

• Government to go ahead with Jaitapur nuclear park
• The Centre will go ahead with the 9,900 MW Jaitapur nuclear power park in
  Maharashtra. A high-level meeting convened by Prime Minister Manmohan
  Singh on Tuesday decided to set up an autonomous Nuclear Authority of
  India to address people’s safety concerns.  
• The proposed Nuclear Regulatory Authority will be an autonomous body
  answerable to Parliament. It will subsume the Atomic Energy Regulatory
  Board. The government will introduce a Bill to this effect in the
  monsoon session of Parliament.
• The meeting also decided to provide a higher compensation for displaced people.
• Following the Fukushima disaster, there have been apprehensions about the safety
  of nuclear plants and this added fuel to protests in Jaitapur. The
  meeting acknowledged the need for better safety standards and decided to
  put each of the six reactors at Jaitapur under their own operations
  system. Government leaders said the operational safety review team of
  the International Atomic Energy Agency will be invited to conduct safety
  reviews and audit of all nuclear plants.
• At present, India operates 20 small nuclear reactors at six sites with a
  capacity of 4,780 MW, or 3% of total power capacity. It hopes to
  increase nuclear capacity to 7,280 MW by next year, more than 20,000 MW
  by 2020 and 63,000 MW by 2032, adding nearly 30 reactors.

• Justice PD Dinakaran moves SC to stay probe against him
• Sikkim High Court Chief Justice PD Dinakaran has asked the Supreme Court to
  stay an inquiry against him by a Parliament-appointed panel.
• The panel, appointed by the Rajya Sabha chairperson Hamid Ansari after the
  House initiated impeachment motion against him, had asked Dinakaran to
  respond to the 16 charges framed against him. The panel is examining
  charges of corruption, land grabbing, abuse of judicial office and
  amassing wealth disproportionate to known sources of income against
  Dinakaran. The three-member panel headed by Justice Aftab Alam of the
  SC, Karnataka High Court Chief Justice JS Khehar and senior advocate PP
  Rao had rejected Dinakaran’s plea seeking stay on proceedings till he is
  supplied with all documents being looked into.
• Dinakaran sought quashing of the panel’s order, which rejected his appeal,
  seeking recusal of PP Rao alleging that he was biased. Dinakaran had
  said he apprehended that there was likelihood of bias in the proceedings
  as Rao had earlier campaigned against him when his elevation to the SC
  was under consideration.
• Charges against Justice Dinakaran, who is due to retire on May 9, 2012, were
  levelled when he was Chief Justice of the Karnataka HC. He was
  subsequently transferred to the Sikkim High Court.

• The only Indian Prince who has been invited to the Prince William and Kate wedding
• Raghav Raj Singh, the current maharajsahib of Shivrati, a jagir in the former
  princely state of Udaipur, is the only Indian aristocrat to be invited
  to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in London on Friday.
  
• He is a good friend of Prince William.  Singh, a Sisodia Rajput, has
  played with William at the famed Cirencester Park Polo Club and Windsor
  Polo Club, both favourites of the Wales brothers.
• Wearing a resplendent traditional Mewari sherwani and colourful headgear, he
  will stand out among the grey morning suit clad men in the congregation.
  His wife, Shelja Kumari, from the thikana of Umaidnagar in Jodhpur,
  draped in a classic sari favoured by Indian nobility and heirloom family
  jewellery is equally likely to stand out.
• An alumnus of Mayo College, Ajmer and St Stephen’s, Delhi, Singh did a
  stint at Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire as an exchange , which
  should come in handy for his future foray into healthcare and wellness
  segment in Rajasthan and Delhi.

Finance & Economy

• Is it the right time to allow export of food grains?
• Yes, argues today's ET editorial.  Look at its reasoning:
• First, India’s stockpile of foodgrains is now around 45 million tonnes, double
  the buffer stock that is mandated for food security. A bumper harvest
  is forecast, after which the government will add another 25 million
  tonnes to this pile.
• Second, the government and its main procuring and stocking arm, the Food
  Corporation of India (FCI), have proved that they cannot handle such
  large food stocks. In many places, grains are piled high under plastic
  sheets, exposed to the weather and rodents. Even after distributing rice
  for as low as Rs. 1 or Rs. 2 per kilogramme in states like Tamil Nadu
  and Andhra Pradesh, stocks stubbornly refuse to run down. It is likely
  that by the time the government decides to do something about this food
  mountain, worth around Rs. 40,000 crore, much of it would have become
  dinner for rats.
• Three, food inflation is not being driven by foodgrains, but by the spiralling
  prices of vegetables, edible oil, pulses and milk. Exports of
  foodgrains will not add to food price inflation at home; indeed, it
  might help to increase farmers’ incomes.
• Finally, the most compelling argument is about prices. The glut has pushed
  market prices of wheat to below the minimum support price (MSP) of Rs.
  1,170 per quintal. Indeed, in states like Uttar Pradesh, wheat is being
  sold for Rs. 1,050 per quintal, a substantial discount to the MSP. In
  global markets, wheat is being traded at around Rs. 1,530 per quintal.
  So, if India lifts its export curbs on foodgrains, imposed after the
  food price scare last year, exporters can make a nifty profit, storage
  costs would come down and farmers’ incomes would go up, yielding some
  incentive to invest in technologies to boost productivity.

• RBI fines 19 banks for selling complex derivatives to corporates
• State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Citibank and Axis Bank are among 19 lenders
  penalised by the Reserve Bank of India for violating currency
  derivatives norms and selling products to companies which did not
  understand them. This ends a three-year dispute between banks and small
  companies burnt by derivatives.
• The penalty may be small, ranging from 5 lakh to 15 lakh. But the ruling
  was a blow to banks since it vindicated the claims of tiny companies
  that claimed banks sold meaningless contracts to earn fees to boost
  earnings.
• The RBI has been scanning the derivative books of banks for more than a
  year and had sought information from 22 lenders about these
  transactions.
• The RBI order vindicates the stand of corporates, some of whom had sued
  banks on grounds of misselling. Others had claimed that some of the
  contracts were contrary to law, particularly the FEMA.  Already, most
  matters had been settled out of court with banks picking up 25-50% of
  the losses. This order will hasten the settlement of remaining disputes.
• Banks had sold currency derivatives to allow corporates to either improve the
  earnings on their exports, lower the outgo on imports, or cut the
  interest and repayment cost on loans.  The better exchange rates that
  such swaps and options offered always came with risks that most
  corporates either ignored or thought were academic — eventualities that
  are unlikely to materialise.
• Several bets backfired when currencies like euro, swiss franc and yen surged in
  2007. By late 2007 and early 2008, when corporates were asked to pay up
  after the markets moved against them, there was a hue and cry. Private
  lenders, including ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, ABN Amro (now RBS), Axis and
  Kotak were sued by companies. Most cases were settled out of court.
• Amid court feuds between banks and corporates, the RBI appointed an
  inter-departmental group to inspect the trades. The group spotted
  transactions where the underlier was inadequate while in some cases
  multiple transactions were done against photocopies of the same document
  that served as an underlier. In such situations derivative deals are no
  longer hedges, but pure currency bets.
• In some cases, documents on a company’s past export performance that is
  used to arrive at a hedging limit was not certified by the auditor. The
  RBI decision will be followed by parties in the case pending before the
  SC.

International

• Compulsory sectoral talks not acceptable, says India
• India is examining the latest draft proposals circulated by the World Trade
  Organisation to bring to life the deadlocked Doha round of global trade
  talks, but will continue to oppose the US move to make participation in
  sectoral talks compulsory.
• Disagreement between the US and large developing countries, including India, China
  and Brazil, over sectoral negotiations to eliminate duties on select
  industrial goods has been identified by WTO director general Pascal Lamy
  as the biggest issue blocking the progress of the round.
• The US has been insisting that large developing countries should agree to
  eliminate tariffs on some industrial goods through compulsory
  participation in sectoral negotiations while the opposing countries
  maintain that it is outside the mandate of the Doha round.