Daily GK Updates – 13th May 2015
1. PM Narendra Modi launched Atal Pension Yojana (APY) for unorganised sector workers
i. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 9 May 2015 launched three mega social security schemes in Kolkata, West 
Bengal.
ii. Three schemes intend to widen the process of financial inclusion in the country include
Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Yojana (PMJJBY).
Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana (PMSBY).
Atal Pension Yojana (APY).
Atal Pension Yojana (APY)
Under APY scheme, the pension subscribers will receive a fixed minimum monthly pension ranging from 1,000 rupees to 5,000 rupees at the age of 60 years.
The fixed minimum monthly pension will be depending on the contributions subscribers.
Contribution: Union Government will co-contribute 50 percent of the total contribution of subscriber for a period of 5 years.
Eligibility: Subscribers must have bank account and should not be members of any statutory social security scheme and or Income Tax payers.
The minimum age of joining: 18 years and maximum age is 40 years.
Focus of APY: To target unorganised sector workers.
Coverage: The pension will also be available to the spouse on the death of the subscriber and thereafter, the pension corpus would be returned to the nominee.
Subscriber and Enrolment Payment: It will auto-debited from the accounts account holders depending upon selected monthly pension range.
Enrolment agencies: Subscribers will be enrolled through institutional architecture of National Pension System by all Points of Presence (Service Providers) and Aggregators under Swavalamban Scheme.
Operational Framework of APY: It will be administered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).
2. UP Government launches Samajwadi water ATM scheme
i. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today said launch of affordable ‘Lohia gramin bus seva’, with 25 per cent lower fares, has received accolade from the people and it needs to be expanded further keeping in view the size of the state and the population.
ii. He also laid foundation stones of 25 modern bus stations at a function organised by the state transport department at his official residence here.
iii. The Cheif Minister said making potable water available at such reasonable price to bus passengers indicated the socialist thinking of his government and called for installing water ATMs at most of the bus stations. Water ATMs will provide potable water at the rate of Re 1 per litre and cold water at Rs 2 per litre, he added.
iv. He said the launch of ‘Lohia gramin bus seva’ has provided connectivity at affordable fare between cities and rural areas where there was no means of public transport.
v. Yadav today launched a host of services of the state transport department which include Samajwadi water ATM scheme at bus stations, 149 self operating inquiry service, super luxury air-conditioned bus service.
3. India Post launched Dedicated E-Commerce Centre in New Delhi
i. India Posts launched a dedicated E-Commerce Centre in New Delhi to cater the e-commerce business enterprises. It was launched by Union Communication and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad at Safdarjang, New Delhi.
ii. This project was implemented by Department of Posts through Delhi Postal Circle. This processing centre will exclusively handle all the e-commerce business. It is capable of handling 30000 parcels (articles) per day.
iii. It will also facilitate collection of parcels from the e-commerce customers by processing and dispatching them within 24 hours to respective destination. For this purpose the centre will use quickest available transportation facility like flight or trains.
4. President Pranab Mukherjee appoints new Governors in six states
i. President Pranab Mukherjee on 12 May 2015 appointed Governors in six states. Their appointments will take effect from the dates they assume charge.
Following are newly appointed Governors
Jharkhand: Former Odisha Minister Droupadi Murmu was appointed as Governor of Jharkhand. She will replace Dr Syed Ahmed.
Manipur: Dr Syed Ahmed has been transfered to Manipur for remaining period of his term.
Arunachal Pradesh: J P Rajkhowa was appointed as Governor of Arunachal Pradesh. He will replace Lt. General (Retd.) Nirbhay Sharma.
Mizoram: Lt. General (Retd.) Nirbhay Sharma has been transferred and appointed as Governor of Mizoram for the remainder of his term.
Tripura: Tathagata Roy will be the Governor of Tripura.
Meghalaya: V. Shanmuganthan has been appointed as Meghalaya Governor.
5. Picasso’s painting Les Femme d’Alger sold for 179.3 million US dollars
i. Pablo Picasso’s painting Les Femme d’Alger (Version O) was on 11 May 2015 sold for 179.3 million US dollars during an auction at Christie’s in New York.
ii. With this sale, this painting became the most expensive painting to be sold at an auction. Les Femme d’Alger, a 1955 painting known in English as The Women of Algiers had a pre-auction estimate of 140 million US dollars.
iii. The previous world record for a painting sold at an auction was 142.4 million US dollars for British painter Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud.
About the painting Les Femme d’Alger
Pablo Picasso, the Spanish painter and sculptor, painted a series of fifteen variations of Les Femme d’Alger painting between December 1954 and February 1955.
The paintings depict Algerian women in a harem smoking a hookah.
Picasso designated the series alphabetically as versions A through O. The version sold is Version O, the last of the series.
6. Indian author Neel Mukherjee won 2014 Encore Award for The Lives of Others
i. Indian author Neel Mukherjee on 12 May 2015 won the 2014 Encore Award for his novel The Lives of Others. The award is worth 10000 pounds.
ii. The Lives of Others is his second novel. The novel is set in Kolkata of the 1960s when Naxalite violence was at its peak. It is the story of Supratik Ghosh and his family, after he leaves home to join the Communist party of India, Marxist and mobilise the peasants against their landlords.
iii. The Lives of Others was also shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the Costa Novel Award. Neel Mukherjee’s first novel, A Life Apart, was published in 2010.
iv. Other short-listed authors are Will Wiles, Deborah Kay Davies and Amanda Coe. Encore award was founded by Lucy Astor in 1990 to celebrate second novels.
v. 2013 Encore award won by Evie Wyld for All The Birds, Singing.
7. Centre okays Rs. 20,000-crore budget for Namami Gange scheme
i. The Cabinet approved the flagship “Namami Gange” programme, which integrates the efforts to clean and protect the River Ganga in a comprehensive manner. The programme has a budget outlay of Rs. 20,000 crore for the next 5 years.
ii. The Union Cabinet, chaired by Mr. Modi, approved the flagship programme which integrates the efforts to clean and protect the Ganga river in a comprehensive manner, a government statement here said.
iii. “The programme has a budget outlay of Rs. 20,000 crore for the next five years,” the statement said, adding that it marks “a significant increase over the expenditure in the past 30 years”.
iv. The Centre has incurred an overall expenditure of approximately Rs. 4,000 crore vis-a-vis Ganga rejuvenation since 1985, it added.
v. In order to push the efforts for the Ganga’s clean-up, the statement said that the Centre will now take over 100 per cent funding of various activities/projects under this programme.
8. Retail inflation eases to 4-month low in April
i. Retail inflation in April softened further and fell to a four-month low of 4.87 per cent as prices of food items, vegetables and fruits turned cheaper.
ii. The retail inflation, measured on the basis of Consumer Price Index (CPI), was revised upwards to 5.25 per cent from 5.17 per cent in March 2015.
iii. Fall in food inflation was mainly driven by fruits, vegetables, milk and related products.
iv. Food inflation, based on Consumer Food Price Index, fell to 5.11 per cent during the month from 6.14 per cent in March.
v. Prices of fruits and vegetables increased at a slower pace in April with inflation standing at 5.08 per cent and 6.63 per cent, respectively.
vi. The rate of price rise in cereals and products was slower than a month ago at 2.15 per cent, while inflation in milk and its products was at 8.21 per cent.
9. Facebook signed up with nine news publishers to launch Instant Articles
i. Facebook Inc signed up with nine publishers to launch Instant Articles. Instant Articles will publish articles directly to the social network’s mobile news feeds.
The launch partners for Instant Articles are NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild.
ii. Instant Articles will let stories load more than 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles and will include content from publishers such as the New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic.
iii. The news publishers can either sell and embed advertisements in the articles and keep all of the revenue, or allow Facebook to sell ads.TheInternet social networking company will also let the news companies track data and traffic through comScore and other analytics tools.
iv. Instant Articles lets them deliver fast, interactive articles while maintaining control of their content and business models.
10. Reliance Jio to raise $750 million from Korean company
i. Reliance Industries on Wednesday said its broadband arm has signed up for a $750 million loan, backed by Korea Trade Insurance Corp, to primarily finance the procurements for its infrastructure rollout from Samsung Electronics and Ace Technologies Corp.
ii. In a statement, the company said the facility for Reliance Jio was the second round of financing from the Korean giant and the third overall for the group.
iii. “It has a door-to-door tenor of 12 years, including a two-year availability period and a 10-year repayment period thereafter,” said the statement.
iv. Reliance Jio Infocomm is setting up a pan-India telecom network for 4th generation Net services, communication services and other digital services in areas like education, healthcare, security, financial services, government-citizen interfaces and entertainment.
11. Federal Bank offers free insurance on gold loans
i. Kerala-based Federal Bank will offer a new Gold Loan Product, Akshaya Gold, with the added feature of free insurance cover of up to Rs. 1 lakh.
ii. “Under the scheme, customers will get an insurance cover up to Rs. 1 lakh absolutely free. The product is available at competitive rates across all branches pan India,” the old private sector lender said in a statement.
iii. Customers can avail this loan from any branch in India irrespective of the home branch. Those not holding an account can also avail the loan after submitting the required KYC documents.
iv. Federal Bank also offers Apna Gold 24*7, a premium gold loan product with the convenience of multichannel withdrawal facility like Debit card, Internet, Mobile Banking, POS etc, the bank said.
v. Babu K A, DGM & Head Retail Business, Federal Bank, “This is the first time any bank has come out with a free insurance cover for gold loans customers…Akshaya Gold is a special offer to our customers to meet their personal financial requirements, needs of their children for education or for buying any house hold items or even for going for a trip within India or abroad.”
12. HSBC cuts India ratings to “underweight”
i. In the first major downgrade for Indian markets in the past one year, global brokerage HSBC on Wednesday changed its stance on the country to “underweight”, saying corporate earnings may remain muted, monsoon could be weak and odds are against further rate cuts.
ii. HSBC further said that India has become the second most expensive and one of the most over-owned markets in Asia, after a strong rally on the back of reform optimism generated by the Modi government over the past one year.
iii. It upgraded its stance on markets like The Philippines and Hong Kong.
iv. The downgrade comes at a time when Indian markets are already under acute pressure, primarily because of foreign investors turning heavy sellers on concerns related to the controversial MAT levy and delay in the ambitious indirect tax (GST) and land reforms.
13. BRICS U-17 football tournament set to be held in India
i. Coinciding with the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit next year in India, an under-17 football tournament will be played between the nations here in April.
ii. As a lead-up to the 2017 under-17 FIFA World Cup, India will use the competition to test its infrastructure and on-field preparation.
iii. BRICS Cup project leader and tournament director Joao Gilberto Vaz claimed that the success of the inaugural season of the Indian Super League and an emerging football market in the country also played a part in the decision. Ambedkar Stadium has been identified as the venue.
14. RBI advised all Public Sector Banks to appoint Internal Ombudsman
i. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 11 May 2015 advised all public sector banks (PSBs) to appoint internal Ombudsman. This internal Ombudsman will be designated as Chief Customer Service Officer (CCSO) and it should not have worked in the bank in which it has been appointed as CCSO.
ii. The objective of this initiative is to further boost the quality of customer service and to ensure that there is undivided attention to resolution of customer complaints in banks.
iii. The internal ombudsman will be a forum available to bank customers for grievance redressal before they can even approach the Banking Ombudsman.
iv. Besides, it also asked some private sector and foreign banks to appoint such Ombudsman. These are ICICI Bank Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd., Axis Bank Ltd., Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd., IndusInd Bank Ltd., Standard Chartered Bank, Citi Bank N.A. and HSBC Ltd. These banks have been selected on the basis of their asset size, business mix, etc.
15. Daniel Mookhey, first Indian-origin lawmaker in Australia to take oath on the Gita
i. Daniel Mookhey has become first Indian-origin Member of Parliament (MP) from the Australian state of New South Wales to be sworn in to Australian parliament on the Hindu religious text, the Bhagavadgita.
ii. Recently, he was chosen by the Australian Labour Party to fill the casual vacancy in the New South Wales upper house. Thus, making him state’s first politician of Indian background.
iii. Daniel Mookhey was born in Blacktown suburb in New South Wales to Indian parents who had migrated to Australia from Punjab in 1973.
iv. He holds three university degrees and currently is working as a consultant to unions, charities and community groups.
16. Bharti AXA General Insurance appoints Deepak Iyer as CEO
i. Deepak Iyer was on 12 May 2015 appointed as Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bharti AXA General Insurance.
ii. Currently, he is working as the Managing Director-Indian subcontinent at Wrigley India, a subsidiary of the US-based Mars.
iii. He will take the charge from June 2015. He will take charge from Interim CEO and MD Milind Chalisgaonkar.
iv. Earlier, he worked with PepsiCo for 16 years handling multiple international assignments, including those of Senior Franchise Director-Africa, General Manager-North & East India (including Bangladesh, Nepal & Sri Lanka) and Director-Sales for Modern Trade/ Food service/ Leisure/ Travel & Transport channels of the company.
v. Iyer brings with him 22 years of diverse experience across various aspects of management, sales, marketing, P&L management, operational turnaround, research and development and franchise management across different countries.
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