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Table of Contents

Reading between the rankings

University rankings are broadly indicative
Top rankers: have breadth in the range of disciplines offered & have been recognised as centres of knowledge production
Recently, ‘Conference on Academic Leadership on Education for Resurgence’ was held in Delhi
PM: ₹1 lakh crore for infrastructure by 2022.
While the freeing of universities from external control and increasing their resource base is for the better, the question is whether these moves can by themselves raise higher education in India to the desirable global level. Indian Institute of Science IIT Indore JSS University, Mysuru Amrita University, Coimbatore
Indian universities are lagging in their research output.
Dissemination of knowledge: not up to the mark
$2 billion: fees paid to foreign universities
Surely, resources cannot be the barrier to providing world-class teaching in India?
University teachers are paid well enough and the availability of material is no longer a problem, with highly affordable Indian editions of the best international textbooks.
Internal norms: expectation of excellence from both teachers and students
Autonomy of teachers: from UGC, MHRD & internal.
‘CULTURE’ is mostly owed to the university itself; it is not something that is imposed upon it.
Its culture is a university’s most valuable resource.

As the rupee spins downwards

Government’s response to the rupee’s fast-paced depreciation.
External factors outside its control: oil prices, U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy, turmoil in the international currencies, etc.
RBI: defended the rupee in the forex market by dipping into its $425 billion stockpile of reserves.
Roughly $25 billion was spent between April and September.
A durable solution would be to attract stable, longterm capital, not hot money chasing arbitrage differentials.
stop-gap plugs rather than long-term fixes
The move to raise the import tariffs on select ‘non-essentials’ confers protection on local industries with competitive disadvantage vis-avia imports.
The policy, as conceived, was to tax when crude prices are low, use the proceeds so raised to balance the fiscal books, and whenever prices rise, reduce the tax rates.
Done right, it could mitigate retail prices volatility and fiscal imbalances.

By extension

Just three months after the final draft of the National Register of Citizens for Assam was released, the Supreme Court has tagged a petition seeking a similar process for Tripura.
Group of activists from Tripura, sought a process to identify illegal migrants and deport them from the State.
The petition takes recourse to the 1993 tripartite accord signed by the Government of India with the All Tripura Tribal Force that asked for the repatriation of all Bangladeshi nationals who had come to Tripura after March 25, 1971 and are not in possession of valid documents authorising their presence in the State.
The judicial-bureaucratic process of hearing a petition to seek the deportation of long-settled migrants is fraught with problems, not dissimilar to those already being faced in Assam.
There is no answer to how the deportation process could (or should) proceed.

Important News

AI plane flies 4 hours with ruptured belly, lands safely
A Dubai-bound Air India Express plane, with 136 people on board, was damaged when it hit the boundary wall of the Tiruchi airport while taking off and was airborne for around four hours before it landed safely in Mumbai in the early hours of Friday. The plane had sustained significant damage in its belly, but the pilots continued to fly before being asked to divert to Mumbai.
Panel to study issues raised by #MeToo India
The government will set up a committee of judges and lawyers to examine the existing legal and institutional framework to deal with complaints of sexual harassment at the workplace, Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi announced on Friday.
The Minister said the expert committee would advise the Ministry to strengthen the existing framework.
‘Do you want a country of vegetarians?’
Hearing a petition for a ban on the “barbaric” meat trade and leather industry, Supreme Court Justice Madan B. Lokur on Friday asked whether the objective of the plea is to have a “country full of vegetarians”.
A Bench of Justices Lokur and Deepak Gupta was hearing a PIL filed by ‘Healthy Wealthy Ethical World Guide India Trust’ for a “complete ban on the export of all types of meat (including beef, fish, pork, poultry) and all related products”.
Collegium recommends CJs for five High Courts
The Supreme Court Collegium led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has recommended appointment of Justices N.H. Patil and D.K. Gupta as Chief Justices of the Bombay and the Calcutta High Courts.
India wins election to UNHRC
The 193-member UN General Assembly held elections here for new members to the UN Human Rights Council. The 18 new members were elected by absolute majority through a secret ballot. Countries needed a minimum of 97 votes to get elected to the Council.
PM to pay ‘working visit’ to Japan
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Japan on October 28 and 29 to attend the annual bilateral summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The visit is being billed as “a working visit”, and the two sides are expected to discuss several agreements on enhancing defence and trade cooperation and hold talks on the “Indo-Pacific” region.
Swaraj flags global terror threat
Terrorism is an overwhelming threat to the international order and countries should cooperate with each other in dealing with this threat, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said in her statement at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) ministerial meeting in Tajikistan.
In The Works: Uniform Stamp Duty for Financial Instruments
India will soon have a uniform stamp duty rate across the country on transfer of financial instruments such as debentures and stocks, a key reform that will increase the ease of doing business.
Stamp duty, usually levied on documents and some transactions such as buying and selling of land, has been left out of GST.
Parliament has the powers to prescribe stamp duty rates on instruments such as bills of exchange, cheques, promissory notes, bills of lading, letters of credit, insurance policies, transfer of shares, debentures and proxies. In the case of other instruments, the power to prescribe rates rests with the states.

Financial News –

India’s industrial growth slowed to a three-month low in August, while consumer inflation inched up in September, data released on Friday showed.
Industrial production as measured by Index of Industrial Production (IIP) grew 4.3% in August, compared with 6.6% in July and 4.8% in August last year, the government data showed.
The simultaneously released Consumer Price Index (CPI) showed a hardening in retail inflation to 3.77% in September from 3.69% a month ago, driven by higher food and fuel prices.