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Prelims Special September 2020

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 2 September 2020

8th East Asia Summit (Economic Ministers Meeting)

News: The 8th East Asia Summit (Economic Ministers Meeting) have stressed the importance of further strengthening regional economic cooperation and accelerating post-COVID economic growth.

Facts:

  • East Asia Summit: It was established in 2005.It is a forum of 18 countries.
  • Objective: It is a forum of strategic dialogue and cooperation on the key political, security, and economic challenges facing the Indo-Pacific region.
  • Members: It comprises the ten member states of the ASEAN countries along with 8 members Australia, China, Japan, India, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Russia and the United States.India is a founding member of the East Asia Summit.
  • Priority Areas: There are six priority areas of regional cooperation within the framework of the EAS which are a) Environment and Energy b) Education c) Finance d) Global Health Issues and Pandemic Diseases e) Natural Disaster Management and f) ASEAN Connectivity.
  • First Summit: It was held in Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia in 2005.

Additional Facts:

  • ASEAN: Itis a regional grouping which was established in 1967 with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration.
    • Members: Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei, and Laos.
    • Headquarters: Jakarta, Indonesia.

2.Onam Festival 2020

News: The President of India has greeted the citizens of the country on the eve of Onam festival.

Facts:

  • Onam: It is the biggest and the most important festival of the state of Kerala.
  • When is it celebrated? It is celebrated at the beginning of the month of Chingam,the first month of Malayalam Calendar (Kollavarsham).
  • Why is it celebrated? 
    • According to a popular legend,the festival is celebrated to welcome King Mahabali whose spirit is said to visit Kerala at the time of Onam.
    • It is also celebrated as the festival of paddy harvest.
  • Significant Features of the festival:
    • Onasadya: It is the most important part of the festival and is considered to be the most elaborate and grand meal prepared by any civilisation or cultures in the world.
    • Activities: The people take part in a variety of group activities such as the Pookolam (rangoli made with fresh flowers), Vallam Kali (boat race), Pulikali (tiger dance), Kai Kottu Kali (Onam dance), Kummattikali (mask dance) and various other activities.

3.Famous art of ‘Etikoppaka’ dolls finds mention in PM’s “Mann ki Baat”

News: The famous art of ‘Etikoppaka’ dolls of Visakhapatnam district was mentioned in the Prime Minister’s “Mann ki Baat” programme.

Facts:

  • ‘Etikoppaka’ dolls: Etikoppaka is a small village on the banks of Varaha River in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh.In 2017, the Etikoppaka toys acquired a Geographical Indications(GI) tag.
  • Features: Toys are made of soft wood and lacquer color.Coloured with natural dyes derived from seeds,lacquer,roots and leaves.The way of toy making is also known as turned wood lacquer craft.

4.Karnataka CM flags off first RO-RO train service between Bengaluru and Solapur

News: Karnataka Chief Minister has flagged off the first Roll-On Roll-Off (RORO) service of the South Western Railways from Nelamangla (near Bengaluru) to Bale (near Solapur).

Facts:

  • Roll-On Roll-Off(RORO) Service: It is a concept of carrying road vehicles loaded with various commodities on open flat railway wagons.
  • First Introduced in: RO-RO train services were first introduced in Indian Railways on Konkan Railways in 1999.
  • Benefits: a) Faster movement of goods and essentials b) Reduces congestion on the roads c) Saves precious fuel d) Reduces carbon footprint e) No hassles of check posts/toll gates f) Seamless Interoperability between roads & railways and g) Ensuring uninterrupted supply of essential commodities.

5.Indian Railways develops “MEDBOT”

Facts: MEDBOT is a remote-controlled medical trolley developed by Indian Railways to deliver food, medicines to COVID-19 patients.

6.CSIR-CMERI develops World’s Largest Solar Tree

Facts:

  • CSIR-CMERI has developed the World’s Largest Solar Tree which is installed at CSIR-CMERI Durgapur, West Bengal.
  • The installed capacity of the Solar Tree is above 11.5 kWp.The Solar tree has an annual capacity of generating 12,000 to 14,000 units of Clean and Green power.
  • Applications:
    • Solar Tree can be aligned with agriculture to substitute price volatile fossil fuels.One solar tree can reduce ten to twelve tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.Also,the surplus power from these trees can be fed to the energy grids.
    • It also has capability to incorporate Internet of Things(IoT) based features.This includes wind speed, real-time humidity, rainfall prediction and soil analytics sensors.

Additional Facts:

  • e-Suvidha: These are solar powered kiosks developed by CSIR-CMERI that can be connected to Solar Trees for real-time access to the vast majority of agricultural database as well as to the eNAM i.e. National Agricultural MarketPlace for instant and real-time access to an unified online market.
  • Solar Tree: It is a structure incorporating solar energy technology on a single pillar, like a tree trunk.It may be a solar artwork or a functional power generator.

7.Brazil’s Pantanal Wetland Is Burning Out Of Control

News: Pantanal Wetland is currently suffering its worst fires in more than two decades with nearly 12% of its vegetation reportedly already lost.

Facts:

  • Pantanal Wetland: It is a natural region encompassing the world’s largest tropical wetland area and the world’s largest flooded grasslands.
  • Location: It is located mostly within Brazil but it extends into portions of Bolivia and Paraguay.
  • Significance:
    • In 2000, part of this ecoregion, the ‘Pantanal Conservation Area’ representing 1.3% of the Brazilian Pantanal was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
    • In the same year, a part of Pantanal Wetland was named as UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.The Pantanal Biosphere Reserve is home to a diversity of flora and fauna that is particularly valuable containing at least 4,700 described species.

8.GDP contracts by record 23.9% in Q1

News: The National Statistical Office(NSO) has released the GDP data.It has shown that GDP in the April-June quarter of 2020-21 has shrinked by 23.9% compared with growth of 3.1% in the previous (January-March) quarter.

Facts:

  • Indian economy shrank by 23.9%, its worst slump since the country started releasing quarterly data in 1996.
  • Among major economies, India’s contraction was the sharpest.China, after posting a contraction in the January-March quarter has recovered with 3.2% growth in the April-June quarter.
  • Agriculture was the only bright spot.The sector rose an annual 3.4% in the June quarter compared with a growth of 3% in the June quarter of 2019-20.
  • Manufacturing sector has fallen by 39.3% in the June quarter while construction slumped 50.3% during the three-month period.
  • Services sector which accounts for nearly 60% of the economy, slumped by 20.6% in the June quarter, compared to a 4.4% growth in the previous.
  • Private consumption witnessed a sharp decline of 24.5% in the first quarter from 8.5% increase in the year ago period.
  • However, government consumption saw a 20.2% increase in the June quarter compared with the 9.5% growth in the same quarter of the previous year.

9.Renati Chola Era Inscription

News: A rare inscription dating back to the Renati Chola era has been unearthed in a remote village of Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh.

Facts:

  • The inscription was written in archaic Telugu
  • It was assigned to the 8th Century A.D., when the region was under the rule of Chola Maharaja of Renadu.
  • The inscription seems to throw light on the record of a gift of six Marttus (a measuring unit) of land to a Brahmin Priest. 

Additional Information:

  • The Telugu Cholas of Renadu (also called as Renati Cholas) ruled over Renadu region, the present day Cuddapah district.
  • The earliest of this family was Nandivarman (500 AD).

31 August - 1 September 2020

Facts of the Day

Operation Twist

  • Recently, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced several measures to ensure orderly market conditions and smooth financial conditions.
  • These measures include two more tranches of special Open Market Operations (OMOs) in bonds and a hike in the Held-To-Maturity (HTM) limit under the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) for banks.
  • Operation Twist is the name given to a USA Federal Reserve monetary policy operation, which involves the purchase and sale of government securities to boost the economy by bringing down long-term interest rates.
  • It is now being used for similar measures taken by RBI in Indian context as well.

Open Market Operation

  • Open Market Operations is the simultaneous sale and purchase of government securities and treasury bills by RBI.
  • The objective of OMO is to regulate the money supply in the economy.
  • RBI carries out the OMO through commercial banks and does not directly deal with the public.
  • OMO is one of the quantitative tools that RBI uses to smoothen the liquidity conditions through the year and minimize its impact on the interest rate and inflation rate levels.

Land Bank System

  • Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry has launched a prototype of the National GIS-enabled Land Bank System.
  • The LBS has been launched for six States based on which land can be identified for setting up industries.
  • The system has been developed by the Integration of Industrial Information System (IIS) with state GIS (Geographic Information System).
  • IIS portal is a GIS-enabled database of industrial clusters/areas across the states.
  • On the system, more than 3,300 industrial parks across 31 states/UTs covering about 4,75,000 hectares of land have also been mapped out on the system.
  • The information available on the system will include drainage, forest; raw material heat maps (horticulture, agricultural, mineral layers); multilayer of connectivity.
  • IIS has adopted a committed approach towards industrial upgrading, resource optimization, and sustainability.
  • The initiative has been supported by the
  1. National e-Governance Division (NeGD),
  2. National Centre of Geo-Informatics (NCoG),
  3. Invest India,
  4. Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo-Informatics (BISAG),
  5. Ministry of Electronics and Informational Technology.

Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI)

  • Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (SCRI) is a trilateral approach to trade, mooted by Japan with India and Australia as the key-partners.
  • The initiative aims to reduce the dependency on a single nation (at present China).
  • SCRI is a direct response to individual companies and economies concerned about Chinese political behavior and the disruption that could lead to the supply chain.
  • The initiative, first proposed by Japan with India and Australia as partners, potentially see other Asian and Pacific Rim nations later.
  • SCRI aims to attract foreign direct investment to turn the Indo-Pacific into an “economic powerhouse”.

UN’s guidelines for people with disabilities

  • United Nations has released it’s first-ever guidelines on access to social justice for people with disabilities to make it easier for them to access justice systems around the world.
  • The guidelines outline a set of 10 principles and detail the steps for implementation.
  • The 10 principles are:
  1. All persons with disabilities have legal capacity and, therefore, no one shall be denied access to justice on the basis of disability.
  2. Facilities and services must be universally accessible to ensure equal access to justice without discrimination of persons with disabilities.
  3. Persons with disabilities, including children with disabilities, have the right to appropriate procedural accommodations.
  4. Persons with disabilities have the right to access legal notices and information in a timely and accessible manner on an equal basis with others.
  5. Persons with disabilities are entitled to all substantive and procedural safeguards recognized in international law on an equal basis with others, and States must provide the necessary accommodations to guarantee due process.
  6. Persons with disabilities have the right to free or affordable legal assistance.
  7. Persons with disabilities have the right to participate in the administration of justice on an equal basis with others.
  8. Persons with disabilities have the rights to report complaints and initiate legal proceedings concerning human rights violations and crimes, have their complaints investigated and be afforded effective remedies.
  9. Effective and robust monitoring mechanisms play a critical role in supporting access to justice for persons with disabilities.
  10. All those working in the justice system must be provided with awareness-raising and training programmes addressing the rights of persons with disabilities, in particular in the context of access to justice.

Quantum State Interferography

  • Scientists from Raman Research Institute (RRI), have found a new way of inferring the state of a system (both two-dimensional qubits as well as higher-dimensional “qubits”) from an interference pattern, which they term ‘Quantum State Interferography’.
  • A qubit is a 2-dimensional quantum system and requires usually 2 complex numbers to be determined towards state estimation
  • Scientists are experimenting with new ways to manipulate quantum states so that they can be harnessed for computing, communication, and metrology.
  • Quantum State Interferography, can help make such manipulations simpler so that several crucial operations in quantum technologies become less cumbersome.
  • The setup requires only two interferometers from which many interferograms can be obtained to reconstruct the state.

International Day against Nuclear Tests

  • International Day against Nuclear Tests was observed on 29 August.
  • 2010 marked the inaugural commemoration of the International Day against Nuclear Tests.
  • Resolution 64/35 of UNGA calls for increasing awareness and education “about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”
  • The resolution was initiated by Kazakhstan with a view to commemorating the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test site on 29 August 1991.

 

News of the Day : Be Wise Revise


E-market platform launched to bridge gap between Indian farmers and UAE food industry

  • AGRIOTA: It is an E-market agricultural commodity trading platform launched by the UAE Government to bridge the gap between Indian rural farmers and the UAE Food Industry.
  • The platform will allow farmers to connect with the UAE food industry directly bypassing intermediaries.It also optimizes the supply chain and ensures traceability creating value for all stakeholders.

Extra Facts

  • Global Food Security Index: It measures food security across most of the countries of the world.It was first published in 2012 and is managed and updated annually by The Economist’s intelligence unit.In 2019, Singapore topped the index and India was ranked 72nd out of 113 countries.
  • Global food policy report: Ithas been released by the International Food Policy Research Institute(IFPRI).The theme of the 2019 report is rural revitalisation.The report highlights the urgency of rural revitalization to address a growing crisis in rural areas.

News: Union Power Minister has addressed the 6th Foundation Day of Association of Renewable Energy Agencies of States(AREAS).

  • AREAS: It has been formed as a Ministry of New and Renewable Energy(MNRE) initiative to provide a knowledge sharing platform for the renewable energy sector.
  • Registered under: It has been registered under Society Registration Act 1860 in 2014.
  • Composition: Union Minister for New & Renewable Energy is the Patron of the Association and Secretary, MNRE is the ex-officio President of the Association.
    • All SNAs( State Nodal Agencies) are members of the Association.
3.Defence Minister launches Chhavni COVID:Yodha Sanrakshan Yojana
  • Chhavni COVID:Yodha Sanrakshan Yojana: It is a group life insurance scheme to be implemented through Life Insurance Corporation(LIC).
  • Coverage: It will cover more than 10,000 employees in all 62 Cantonment Boards in event of any unfortunate fatal calamity with an insurance cover of Rs five lakhs each.
  • Significance: The scheme will benefit permanent and contractual employees including doctors, paramedics and sanitation staff.

Additional Facts:

  • Cantonment Board: It is established for the administration of the civilian population in the cantonment area under the provisions of the Cantonments Act of 2006.Nodal Ministry:Ministry of Defence.


News: United Nations has released the “International Principles and Guidelines on Access to Justice for Persons with Disabilities”

  • Aim: To dismantle barriers blocking people with disabilities from access to justice.
  • What does the Guidelines provide? The guidelines outline 10 principles of access to justice for people with disabilities such as people with disabilities have the right to participate in the administration of justice on an equal basis with others and detailed steps for implementation.

Additional Facts:

  • UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: It was adopted in 2007 as the first major instrument of human rights in the 21st century.
    • It defines persons with disabilities as those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.
  • International Disability Alliance: It was created in 2009 as an alliance of eight global and six regional organisations of persons with disabilities.
    • Purpose: They advocate at the UN for a more inclusive global environment for persons with disabilities and their organisations.
    • Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
  • Accessible India campaign: Itis a nation-wide Campaign launched by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD) of the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment in 2015.
    • Aim: To provide universal accessibility to persons with disabilities with focus on developing an accessible physical environment, transportation system and Information & communication ecosystem.
  • Article 41 of the Directive Principles of State policy(DPSP): Itprovide that State shall within the limits of its economic capacity and development make effective provision for securing the right to work to educa­tion and to public assistance in cases of unemployment, old age, sickness and disablement.


News: Union Textiles Minister has addressed the award giving ceremony for winners of the Textile Grand Challenge 2019.

  • Textile Grand Challenge: It was organized by the Ministry of Textiles with the active support of National Jute Board and the Startup India Team of the Department for Promotion of Industry & Industrial Trade (DPIIT).
  • Aim: Tobring forward innovative ideas by start-ups/entrepreneurs for development of cost effective and low-weight carry bags using Jute Biomass, Jute Plant based biopolymer and cotton fibre waste to phase out plastic bags.


News: Ministry of Home Affairs(MHA) has notified Rules of Transaction of Business for the Government of Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir(J&K).

  • What does the rules provide? The rules provide details of work allocation, distribution of the business among the departments, their powers, executive powers of LG among others in J&K.

Highlights of Rules:

  • Departments: There will be 39 departments in the J&K such as school education, agriculture, higher education, horticulture, election, general administration, home, mining, power, Public Works Department, tribal affairs and transport.
  • Public Order: Police, Public order, All India Services and Anti-corruption will fall under the executive functions of the LG.This implies that the Chief Minister or the Council of Ministers will have no say in their functioning.
  • Peace and Tranquility: Proposals or matters which are likely to affect the peace and tranquility of the UT or the interest of any minority community, SC, ST and the Backward Classes shall be submitted to the LG through the Chief Secretary under intimation to the Chief Minister.
  • Conflict between UT and Centre: Any matter which is likely to bring the government of the Union Territory into a controversy with the Centre or a State government shall as soon as possible, be brought to the notice of the LG and the Chief Minister through the Chief Secretary.
  • Communications: All important communications received from the Centre shall as soon as possible be submitted to the Chief Secretary, the Minister in charge, the Chief Minister and the LG for information.
  • Difference of Opinion: In case of difference of opinion between the LG and a Minister when no agreement could be reached even after a month, the decision of the LG shall be deemed to have been accepted by the Council of Ministers.


News: Many skilled artisans are abandoning Channapatna toymaking for other jobs.

  • Channapatna toys are a particular form of wooden toys that are manufactured in the town of Channapatna, in the Ramanagara district of Karnataka.
  • The manufacture of toys in Channapatna goes back at least 200 and it has been traced to the era of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan in the 18th century.
  • The toys are famous for its smooth quality and bright colours of the products that were safe to handle.
  • It has been accorded GI Tag.


News: the procurement of Kandhamal Haldi has been badly affected by the pandemic.

  • Kandhamal Haldi is a member of the Curcuma botanical group, which is a part of the ginger family whose botanical name is Curcuma Longa. It is known for its medicinal values.
  • The crop is cultivated in Kandhamal,a district in Odisha which is centrally located and whose geographical area is hilly and covered with forest. Further, Kandhamal turmeric is organically produced and is sustainable in adverse climate conditions.
  • It has been accorded GI Tag.








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