Current Affairs 10th May 2018

Current Affairs 10th May 2018 - Important Points

• Walmart buys 77 percent stake in Flipkart for USD 16 billion on - 9th May 2018
• President Ram Nath Kovind approved Minimum Wages (Delhi) Amendment Act, 2017 on - 4th May 2018
• Modern animal-free testing for drugs approved by - Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission 
• India’s first Integrated Control and Command Centre for its smart cities launched by - Madhya Pradesh
• India ranks fourth in Asia-Pacific region in - Asia Power Index
• Nepal granted license to India’s Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd to generate power for project- Arun-3 Hydropower

Current Affairs 10th May 2018 - Details

Walmart buys 77 percent stake in Flipkart for USD 16 billion on - 9th May 2018

Global retail mega Walmart formally inked a definitive contract to acquire 77% share in Flipkart with an
investment of approximate USD 16 billion, on May 9th , 2018. The deal will worth Flipkart at around USD 20.8 billion, increase from its earlier evaluation of USD 12 billion.
Of the final deal amount of USD 16 billion, USD two billion will be fresh equity funding, while the balance will be used to buy share from present investors including Softbank, Naspers and co-founder Sachin Bansal. 

Important Highlights

• With this deal, Walmart focuses to transform Flipkart into a publicly-listed and major retained subsidiary in the future.
• The Walmart and Flipkart deal is possibly the biggest in the e-commerce space and is expected to effect the complete segment, be it the participants or the consumers. 
• The deal has created a worried with the small vendors, who terror of being wiped off from the market.
• Walmart has a status of finishing small businesses with its most-low prices. 
• If Walmart brings in its own private labels on Flipkart, it might make it difficult for rest of the vendors to operate. This major concern was shared by the All India Online Vendors Association, which has 3500 vendors on large platforms like Flipkart and Amazon.
  Positive side of the deal
• Walmart’s investment will profit India in terms of quality and reasonable goods for customers, creation of new jobs and fresh options for small vendors, farmers and women entrepreneurs. 
• Walmart's investment in Flipkart will give an edge to Flipkart to contend with sellers like Amazon.
• Moreover, Walmart’s extensive experience in retailing, logistics and distribution chain management will assist Flipkart grow its business without any problem.
• For competition, the deal is supposed to intensify the battle between Amazon and Flipkart. On one side, this war could slash the marketplace for small sellers, while, on the flip side, this war between Flipkart and Amazon could result into a vast supply chain and large number of jobs production.

President Ram Nath Kovind approved Minimum Wages (Delhi) Amendment Act, 2017 on - 4th May 2018

The Minimum Wages (Delhi) Amendment Act, 2017 was formally notified on May 4th, 2018 following the endorsement of the Bill by President Ram Nath Kovind on April 26th, 2018.
This fresh legislation amends the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 and was approved by the Delhi Assembly on August 10th, 2017. The bill was 1st tabled in 2015. 

Provisions of the Bill

• According to the amendment, the companies violating labour rules in Delhi will now have fine ranging from Rupees 20000 to 50000 and jail term of 1-3 years.
• The employer will upload the company information on web portal in the manner as arranged.
• The court will need to arrange it off within a month from the date of filing. 
• The rate of payment for overtime work will be not less than 2 times of the normal wages fixed under the Act or under any law of the appropriate government, whichever is on higher side.
• The modified law will act powerfully against the employers who do not pay complete minimum wages. The Department of Law, Justice and Legislative Affairs of the Delhi also released a notification, making it mandatory for employers to pay salary either electronically or through cheques, except in few special cases.

Modern animal-free testing for drugs approved by - Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission 

Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission has in its 2018 edition of Indian Pharmacopoeia passed modern,
animal-free tests for drug producers. It will spare animals from suffering due to medicinal experiments.
2018 Indian Pharmacopoeia.
It provides strategies on tests for medicines produced and marketed in India. It substitutes pyrogen test
carried-out on rabbits and abnormal-toxicity test carried out on guinea pigs and mice with tests that can
be accomplish in test tubes. These rules will come into effect from July 1st, 2018.
The pyrogen test will be substituted by bacterial endotoxin test which can be done in test tubes. For
abnormal toxicity test, Vaccine producers can apply for waiver by receiving compliance certificate from
National Control Laboratory.
Did you know?

• PETA India was pushing for removing away with cruel methods of testing on animals for the last many years. It had written to Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission in 2015 with various proposals. These proposals were deliberated in a meeting of expert committee on vaccine standards that was organised in 2016 and few of them have finally sanctioned by Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission.
• Pyrogen test is done to detect impurity or side-effects causing substances. For the test, drug is
  administrated into rabbit and animal is closely studied for feverish symptoms. The abnormal toxicity test is done to see the dangerous biological contamination in injection preparations. This batch test is done before product is permitted for marketing. In this, guinea pigs are inserted with vaccine. The scientists detect if there is death of any animal.

India’s first Integrated Control and Command Centre for its smart cities launched by - Madhya Pradesh

Bhopal Smart City Development Corporation Ltd. has introduced India’s 1st cloud-based Common Integrated Data Centre, Disaster Recovery Centre and Integrated Control and Command Centre. It is powered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Universal Internet of Things Platform.
Key Points

• Integrated Control and Command Centre will facilitate MP State administration to monitor and
  administer multiple city civic conveniences and citizen-services across 7 smart cities in state through central cloud.
• These 7 cities are Bhopal, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Indore, Ujjain, Satna, and Sagar.
• It will also facilitate state-wide monitoring of these cities from central command view and result in
  noteworthy cost savings in comparison to organizing full-fledged information and disaster recovery
  centre along with command control centres in every of these 7 cities.
• Hewlett Packard has delivered an end-to- end solution for Bhopal Smart City Development Corporation Ltd. that syndicates its Universal Internet of Things platform, industry leading servers, Edge compute systems, HP-Pointnext services and wide-ranging ecosystem of associates.
• Hewlett Packard Universal Internet of Things platform is critical to Integrated Control and Command Commission, as it acclimatizes and assimilates thousands of discrete sensors and submissions on platform.
• It will facilitate state government to manage and control various citizen services remotely via single
  platform.
• These services consist of Smart Parking, Lighting, Traffic, Transport, Smart Waste Management
  and Smart Water systems.

India ranks fourth in Asia-Pacific region in - Asia Power Index

India was positioned 4th out of 25 countries in Asia-Pacific region in the opening Asia Power Index
published by Australian think tank Lowy Institute.
More about Asia Power Index 
It calculates overall power of nations and territories in Asia-Pacific region. A nation’s complete power is
its weighted average across eight measures of power – economic resources, military capability,
diplomatic influence, economic relationships, resilience, future trends, defence networks and social
influence.
Key Points

• 3 of the world’s 4 largest economies are in Asia and USA is Pacific power.
• By 2025, 2/3 rd of world’s population will live in Asia, in comparison to just more than a 10th in the West. As per this, United States remained to be renowned power in Asia, while China, an evolving world-power is quickly approaching to USA.
• It positioned Russia, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, New Zealand,
  Vietnam, Taiwan, Pakistan, Philippines and North Korea as middle-powers, while Bangladesh, Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Laos and Nepal as inconsequential powers.
• The index organised that Japan and India are nations that share key power symbols. It branded Japan as smart-power and called India giant of future. India was positioned 4th on parameters of economic resources, military capability and diplomatic influence.
• It was positioned 5th on resilience. However, on the limits of cultural influence and future trends, India recorded well by positioned 3rd in both.

Nepal granted license to India’s Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd to generate power for project- Arun-3 Hydropower

Nepal Government has approved power production licence to Indian government-maintained subsidiary Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam Ltd from a 900 MW Arun-3 Hydropower Project situated in eastern Nepal. The license was arranged in line with the conclusion of meeting of Investment Board Nepal board of directors led by PM KP Sharma Oli.
Key Points

• IBN also has sanctioned various extensions for monetary closure of the project. It consists local share and free energy to inhabitants of affected area.
• Nepal government will also get advantages worth Rupees, in Nepali currency, 348 billion from project as royalty, income-tax, customs tariff and free energy in franchise period of twenty-five years.
• The project will also deliver 21.9 percent of the produced energy without any cost to Nepal.
  Did you know?
• Arun-3 Project is biggest capacity project in history of hydro-electricity of Nepal. It is planned to be
  manufactured within coming 5 years on Arun river. It is an export-focused project and it will trade the electricity to India. Indian government has sanctioned investment of Rupees 57.24 billion projected by SJVN in Arun-3.
• The project was believed to be built under support of World Bank Group few 2 decades back. However, protests in contradiction of reservoir projects back then enforced World Bank to drop the project.
• The project was thereafter granted to the Indian organisation via competitive bidding for ten years ago.