Even though India achieved the goal of elimination (i.e. point prevalence rate of less than 1 case per 10,000 population) of leprosy as a public health problem at national level in December 2005, higher prevalence of leprosy is reported in some areas. Therefore, new cases of leprosy occur due to long incubation period of disease and relatively higher prevalence of leprosy in certain areas of the country. However, new leprosy cases are showing a declining trend i.e. from 1.61 lakh cases in 2005-06 to 1.34 in 2009-10.

Since May 2001, Indian private sector participation is allowed upto 100 % in Defence Industry sector with FDI upto 26 %. So far, 144 Industrial Licenses / Letters of Intent (ILs/LOIs) have been issued to a number of private sector companies for manufacturing of various defence items.

The food subsidy released for subsidised foodgrains distributed under Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families including Antyodaya families  (AAY) and Above Poverty Line (APL)  families during last two years is as under:-

Barren & uncultivable land has decreased from 17.58 million ha. in 2003-04 to 17.30 million ha. in 2007-08.

• Census is the basis for reviewing the country’s progress in the past decade and monitoring the on-going schemes of the Government.

• Census 2011 will be the 15th National Census of the country.

• For the first time a National Population Register (NPR) is being prepared as a part of Census exercise. This is a Register of Usual Residents.

The Election Commission’s statistical reports reveal that as far as representation of Muslim women in the Lok Sabha is concerned, there have never been more than three elected representatives in a House. As in the 15th Lok Sabha, there were three women members in the sixth and the eighth Lok Sabhas. In six Lok Sabhas (first, fourth, fifth, ninth, 10th and 12th), there was no Muslim woman member at all. Of the 549 women elected to the Lok Sabha since independence, only 18 have been Muslims.

The number of foreign tourists who visited Darjeeling during the years 2007, 2008 and 2009 were 19885, 21152 and 21025 respectively. The State Government does not maintain any records regarding the income earned from foreign tourists visiting Darjeeling. T here is no significant decrease in the number of foreign tourists visiting Darjeeling as a result of the ongoing Jan Mukti Morcha movement.

Minister of State for Planning and Parliamentary Affairs Shri V. Narayanasamy has said that Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu and Kannada languages have been classified by the Government as Classical Languages.

The percentage share of textile sector , including handloom sector in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is on an average 2.0% at 1999-00 prices. The employment in the handloom sector as per 1995-96 census is 65,50,126 which is approximately 1.65% of the employment in organized and unorganized sector. The present status of employment in the handloom sector shall be known after completion of ongoing census which is likely to be completed by the end of 2010. The fibre-wise employment detail in handloom sector is not available. This information was given by Smt. Panabaaka Lakshmi, the Minister of State for Textiles, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha..

In 2002, India claimed to produce 350,000 engineers per year. But this included “diploma engineers” who were not true engineers at all. India actually had only 102,000 real engineering graduates in 2002. This went up to 222,000 in 2006 and may be double that in 2011. India does have some excellent engineering schools, but McKinsey estimates that only 25% of Indian engineering graduates are good enough to work for multinationals (and only 15% of finance graduates and 10% of those with degrees of any kind).

Yet in 2007, India’s five largest IT services companies added 120,000 engineering jobs, and IBM and Accenture added another 14,000.  Pharma R&D companies boomed. And foreign car companies made India an export and R&D hub to capitalize on its engineering skills.

According to the World Gold Council, India ranked 13th in the world in terms of official gold holding in March 2008 and 2009. However, with the purchase of 200 metric tonnes of gold by the Reserve Bank of India from the International Monetary Fund under the IMF’s limited gold sales program, India’s rank increased to 10th position in March 2010, with official gold holding of 557.7 metric tonnes. The purchase was part of the Reserve Bank’s foreign exchange reserves management operations.

Replying to a half-an-hour discussion on migration of workers, Labour Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said there are 14 crore migrant labourers in the country based on the 2001 census.

The opposition has move cut motions in parliament this has raised storm in the political circles in the country.  It is there fore necessary to understand and the meaning of cut motion, how it is presented and how it is admitted.

. A motion may be moved to reduce the amount of a demand in any of the following ways:-

(a) ‘that the amount of the demand be reduced to Re.1/-’ representing disapproval of the policy underlying the demand. Such a motion shall be known as ‘Disapproval of Policy Cut’. A member giving notice of such a motion shall indicate in precise terms the particulars of the policy which he proposes to discuss. The discussion shall be confined to the specific point or points mentioned in the notice and it shall be open to members to advocate an alternative policy;

According to the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the term Tribal Dialects is not used in Census records, which is the chief source of information. The analysis, based on Census 2001 reveals that out of a total of 234 mother-tongues (each spoken by atleast 10,000) people there are 147 tribal mother-tongues.

Italy has 559 police officers for every 1,00,000 citizens; Bihar has 60, Orissa 97, Chhattisgarh 128 and Jharkhand 136.

Chhattisgarh has 1,067 government employees per 1,00,000 population; Bihar, a pathetic 472.

As per 2001 census, the total number of child labour in the country was 1.26 crore., The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) has estimated the child labour in the Country at 0.89 crore during 2004-05. However, the next Census figure of working children will be available after the 2011 census.

An earthquake is a phenomenon that occurs without warning and involves violent shaking of the ground and everything over it. It results from the release of accumulated stress of the moving lithospheric or crustal plates. The earth’s crust is divided into seven major plates, some 50 miles thick, which move slowly and continuously over the earth’s interior and several minor plates.

Earthquakes are tectonic in origin; that is the moving plates are responsible of the occurrence of the violent shaking. The occurrence of an earthquake in a populated area may cause numerous casualties and injuries and extensive property damage.

Even if the members resign enmasse, technically the house can continue and the government can continue as long as there is a chorum which is only 10 percent of the strength of the house. However it is politically difficult to run the house in the absence of majority members even though there is chorum technically. But, still there is no need to dissolve the legislature immediately. The Assembly can be kept under suspended animation by imposing president’s rule for some period. The house can be revived after the conditions are restored. The dissolution of the legislature should be the last option only after all the constitutional options are exhausted. As the peoples mandate   can not be nullified and the burden of elections can not be imposed on the people again and again.

According to the constitution ,every member of the legislature has a right to resign if he or she wants to do so. But, the Speaker has to accept the resignation after finding out whether such a resignation is voluntary  and real or whether resignation is given by the member under any pressure. Therefore, Speaker has to personally speak to every member before  taking a decision on  the resignations of the members. Just because a member stages a dharna demanding acceptance of his or her resignation, Speaker  can not do so. However constitution does not stipulate any time frame for taking a decision on the resignation of the members. No Court can intervene in the discretion of Speaker, the power which the Speaker enjoys through the constitution.

From 1890 to 2007, rich countries contributed nearly 60 percent of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. India has contributed merely 3 percent of these emissions. The United States with just 5 percent of world’s population alone is responsible for nearly 30 percent of the carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere. India’s share in the world’s population is about 17 percent. By 2020 too India shall be responsible for about 4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. According to the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Programme, the average energy consumed by an American is equal to the average energy consumed by two Germans or 27 Chinese  or 33 Indians or 300 Nepalis. As the United States account for the problem of carbon dioxide emissions and thereby global warming, historically, it is therefore the responsibility of the US to bear the burden of cleaning up the Earth’s atmosphere.