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Vikram Limaye, the MD and CEO of National Stock Exchange’s (NSE), has been appointed the Chairman of the Working Committee (WoCo) and Director on the Board of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE). The decision was taken at the global body’s 58th general assembly and annual meeting that is currently underway in Athens, Greece. The WFE is the global industry association for exchanges and clearing houses. It represents nearly 45,000 listed companies & has its headquarters in London. It works with policy makers and regulators around the world to support the development of effective rules and standards for exchanges and market participants.

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has kept all key policy rates unchanged in its fourth bi-monthly monetary policy review, which is recently announced on October 5, 2018. A six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by Governor Urjit Patel, decided to keep the repo rate unchanged at 6.5% and the reverse repo rate at 6.25%. Repo rate is the rate at which RBI lends to banks, while the reverse repo is the rate at which RBI borrows money from banks. Accordingly, the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate too were kept at 6.75%. On the growth front, RBI retained GDP growth projection for 2018-19 at 7.4%.

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India have opened their medal account in the 2018 Summer Youth Olympic Games with two Silvers in Buenos Aires, Argentina on October 7. The first went to Tushar Mane in shooting and later Tababi Devi Thangjam in Judo in Girl’s 44kg category. With this, Thangjam from Manipur has created history by becoming the India’s first judoka to win a medal at the Olympics – junior or senior. While Mane bagged silver in the men’s 10m air rifle event with a score of 247.5. India is being represented by 46 athletes in 13 sports in the prestigious event. This is India’s largest ever contingent at the Youth Olympics. Earlier, India won two medals – a silver and a bronze – in the 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing in China.

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US duo William D. Nordhaus and Paul M. Romer have won the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for research “about innovation, climate and economic growth”. Laureate Romer was honoured for his work on the endogenous growth theory, which has generated vast amounts of new research into the regulations and policies that encourage new ideas and long-term prosperity. While Laureate Nordhaus was specifically honoured for “integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis”. His research shows that the most efficient remedy for problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions is a global scheme of carbon taxes uniformly imposed on all countries. Nordhaus was the first person to create a quantitative model that describes the global interplay between the economy and the climate. His model is now widespread and is used to examine the consequences of climate policy interventions, for example carbon taxes. & The pair will share the 9 million Swedish kronor (S$1.3 million) prize.

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Recently, Infosys Foundation announced Rs 1.5 crores Aarohan Social Innovation Awards (ASIA) to push innovation in social work following increase in funds under the government rules. The awards would be given in six categories including healthcare, rural development and destitute care. The purpose of the awards is to recognise and reward individuals, teams or NGOs that are developing unique solutions for the social sector that have the potential to positively impact the underprivileged in India, at scale. The application for the first edition of the awards would be available from October 15 till this year-end. Participants can submit entries describing their work in the form of videos that can be uploaded on the Aarohan social innovation awards website. Under the government rules, it is mandatory for certain categories of company to spend, in every financial year, at least 2% of the average net profits made during the three immediately preceding financial years, in pursuance of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy.

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The book “The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India” has been authored by Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor. It is divided in five sections comprising 50 chapters & will release on 26th October 2018. The first section takes a close look at Modi’s life and times. The other four sections look at key aspects of the way in which Modi’s government functions and the lasting and often “deleterious impact” it has had on Indian society, major institutions, the economy, foreign policy and our fundamental values. In this explosive new book, Tharoor gives us an extraordinary portrait of Narendra Modi and his years in power. The book is currently available for pre-orders on Amazon.

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NITI Aayog has organised Workshop on ‘Best Practices in International Arbitration’ in collaboration with ICC International Court of Arbitration in New Delhi on 10 October 2018. It purpose is to strengthen dispute resolution mechanisms and to not only encourage ‘Make in India’ but also to ‘Resolve in India’. The workshop would cover basic concepts of international arbitration and include best practices on drafting, selection of arbitrators, enforcement of arbitral awards, role of courts in the arbitration life cycle, among other topics, with information sharing sessions to be conducted by world class faculty and practitioners from the United Kingdom, Singapore, Paris and India.

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India has been ranked 147th among 157 countries at the UK-based charity Oxfam International’s ‘Commitment to Reducing Inequality (CRI) Index’ 2018. The 2nd edition of the annual index finds that countries such as South Korea, Namibia and Uruguay are taking strong steps to reduce inequality. However, countries such as India and Nigeria “do very badly” overall. In reference to India, the index finds that the tax structure looked reasonably progressive on paper but in practice much of the progressive taxation, like on incomes of the richest, was not collected. India also fared poorly on labour rights and respect for women in the workplace.The index was topped by Denmark, followed by Germany, Finland, Austria and Norway.

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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has participated in the 17th Council of Heads of Government (CHG-2018) meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was held in Dushanbe, Tajikistan from October 11th to 12th .The SCO CHG meeting is a forum that enables India to engage with SCO member countries and Observer states of Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia. It is the first major meeting since Kyrgyzstan took over as chair of the Organisation. The leaders discussed prospects for further development of SCO and exchanged in-depth views on current international and regional issues. This was the 2nd CHG meeting since India became a full member of SCO in June 2017. Last year, CHG meeting was held in Sochi, Russia and was also attended by EAM.

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On October 11, the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) launched a Roll on-Roll off (Ro-Ro) service in Assam from Neamati to Majuli island. This service will reduce the road route distance of 423 km that trucks take from Neamati to Majuli Island via Tezpur Road Bridge to only 12.7 km with the use of river route. The IWAI has procured a new vessel MV Bhupen Hazarika at a cost of Rs 9.46 crore for the new service. The vessel which is 46.50 meter long and 13.30 meter wide has a carrying capacity of 8 trucks and 100 passengers. The vessel can sail at the speed of 22 km per house. Majuli is one of the biggest riverine islands in the world located on river Brahmaputra and faces serious challenges of connectivity. It has 144 villages with a population of over 1,50,000. The RoRo service was launched in collaboration between IWAI and Assam government.