1. UN motion gives India hope for permanent seat in UNSC

(i) In the first major step towards negotiations for India’s permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC), the UN General Assembly on September 14 announced to use negotiating text as the basis for discussion on the issue over the next year, instead of just statements and speeches.

(ii) India as well as other countries have welcomed the move. India’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. Asoke Mukerji informed, “All of us are celebrating the fact that we can talk about UN reforms with an actual piece of paper on the table.”

2. India misses targets of the UN Millennium Development Goals

(i) India has to achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) by the end of 2015, however, as per the report released by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), only six of the 18 targets as part of the eight goals in 2000 have been fully met. 

(ii) Another report brought out by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific proves that India has met only four of the eight MDGs. 

(iii) MDG targets included eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, encouraging gender equality, bringing down child mortality and improving maternal health, among others. Of these, India has only managed to halve poverty from the 1990s level, ensure gender parity in primary school enrollment, reduce HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB deaths. 

(iv) However, India is far from reducing maternal and child mortality, eliminating hunger and ensuring access to proper sanitation facilities, among others. 

3. Union HRD Ministry to get global scholars to teach in India under GIAN scheme

(i) The Union Human Resource Development Ministry has made an agreement to

rope in academicians from global universities to teach 200 short-term courses in

Indian institutes by the end of 2015.

(ii) The first course under GIAN is

expected to begin at NIT Suratkal in November 2015; Professor Prashant V

Kamat, the John A. Zahm Professor of Science from University of Notre Dame,

USA is likely to take the lecture.

(iii) Scholars like American philiosopher Judith Butler

and Indologist Dean Schulman are also expected to teach at Indian universities.

4. RBI inks MoU with Nepal Rastra Bank 

(i) On September 14, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) inked a Memorandum of Understanding with the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) on Supervisory Cooperation and Exchange of Supervisory Information.

(ii) The Agreement was signed between NRB’s Executive Director Narayan Prasad Paudel and RBI’s Executive Director Meena Hemchandra.

5. SBI launches online shopping card SimplyCLICK

(i) On September 15, the State Bank of India (SBI), launched SimplyCLICK – a card

for online shopping.

(ii) The card has been introduced in partnership with seven e-

commerce firms, viz. Amazon India, BookMyShow, Cleartrip, FabFurnish, Food

Panda, LensKart and Ola Cabs.

(iii) With this card, SBI aims to serve the need of a

large online shopping community. 

6. India’s IISc and IIT-D among world’s top 200 universities

(i) Two Indian institutes figure in Quacquarelli Symonds’ (QS) list of the top 200 universities in the world.

(ii) The Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) have been placed 147th and 179th respectively. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard dominate the first and the second positions respectively.  

(iii) As per the QS report, “While the IITs and the Institute of Science have all progressed in this edition, the large comprehensive universities, such as the University of Delhi and the University of Mumbai have lost ground, principally because of the normalisation by faculty applied to the research indicator but also due to deterioration in other dimensions.”

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