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IASbaba PIB Weekly: Press Information Bureau – 2nd Oct to 7th Oct, 2017
GS-1
Shyamji Krishna Varma
(Topic: The Freedom Struggle – its various stages and important contributors /contributions from different parts of the country)
An Indian revolutionary fighter, lawyer and journalist, who led India’s freedom struggle from London
- Founded the famous India House in London in 1904 which became the nerve centre and nucleus for India’s revolutionaries like Veer Savarkar, Madame Cama, Sardar Singh Rana, V V S Iyer, Lala Hardayal and Virendranath Chattopadhaya and Madhanlal Dhingra – was the political guru of Veer Savarkar, V V S Iyer and many other freedom fighters in this period
- He started the publication of a monthly journal called ‘Indian Sociologist’ which became a vehicle of revolutionary ideas.
- In February 1905, he established the Indian Home Rule Society to raise his voice against British domination in India.
- It was Shyamji who first advocated non-violent means of getting rid of the British and using withdrawal of cooperation with the colonial administration as the most effective weapon for this purpose. Gandhiji built on this and evolved Satyagraha as a tool to oust the British much later.
- Narendra Modi dedicated a memorial ‘Kranti Tirth’, to Shyamji Krishna Verma at the revolutionary’s ancestral town Mandvi in Kutch district
GS-2
Pradhanmantri Grameen Digital Saksharata Abhiyan (PMGDISHA)
(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)
What: An integral component of Digital India Initiative of the Government; the scheme envisage to make 6 crore citizens digitally literate in rural India.
- PMGDISHA envisage providing equal opportunity to rural citizens enabling them to actively participate in nation building and access livelihood through Digital Technology, Devices and Services.
- Citizens trained under PMGDISHA would be skilled in operating digital devices like computers, tablets, smart phones and use Internet in daily life for enhancing their skills and knowledge, access Government to Citizens services, healthcare and financial services as well.
- Focuses on enabling digital financial transactions among the citizens – by seeding Aadhaar number to bank account of the beneficiary and enabling him to access various online Government services like booking of railway tickets, passport application, etc would enable the citizen to leverage technology and participate actively in governance.
Rally for Rivers
(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)
What: ‘Rally for Rivers’ is a drive to generate awareness about the need to save the country’s rivers by proposing
- Policy recommendation to plant trees on either side of our rivers to restore them – development of tree cover up to a depth of 1 kilometre on either side of rivers, with forest trees on government land and fruit trees on farm land, to ensure that the moisture of the air and soil feeds the river throughout the year
- A gradual shift from ploughing-based agriculture to tree-based agriculture
Why ‘Rally for Rivers’
- Per capita availability of water in India has declined by 75% since independence and by 2030 we will have only 50% of the water that we need for our survival.
- Out of 800 streams and tributaries of the Ganga, 470 have become seasonal and flow for only four months a year, which has led to a 44% reduction of water in the river. People have removed 94% green cover in the last 50 years
The rally does not address the most serious problems rivers face:
- Mining of sand beds and boulders
- Pollution
- Deforestation
- Encroachment on river beds
- Biodiversity destruction
- River-linking
- River conservation policies (or lack of them)
Note: Criticisms – Rally for Rivers
Must Read: Link 1 + Link 2 + Link 3 + Link 4
Mindmaps: Link 1 + Link 2 + Link 3
Solve: Question 1 + Question 2 + Question 3
Government constitutes a High Level Committee for proper management of water resources in North Eastern Region
(Topic: Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation)
The Brahmaputra and Barak river systems which account for one-third of India’s run off, are highly prone to floods. Brahmaputra is one of the largest river systems in the world and causes considerable distress and costs on the region through frequent flooding and erosion.
The Committee would facilitate optimising benefits of appropriate water management in the form of hydro-electric power, agriculture, bio-diversity conservation, reduced flood damage erosion, inland water transport, forestry, fishery and eco-tourism.
Why: Optimum management of water resources is a cross-cutting task which requires multi-sectoral interventions and concerted strategy, including management of catchment areas in upper reaches involving concerned Central Ministries and State Governments.
The terms of reference of the Committee include:
- Appraisal of existing mechanism/institutional arrangements for management of water resources of the North Eastern Region.
- Identification of gaps in the existing mechanism/institutional arrangements for optimal management of water resources of the NER.
- Suggest policy interventions required for optimally harnessing the water resources for accelerating development in the NER
- Spelling out of actionable measures required for optimizing the management of water resources in the North-East.
- Chalking out a Plan of Action for dovetailing of the schemes/programmes of concerned Union Ministries, their attached offices and autonomous bodies as well as the schemes of the respective North-Eastern State Governments.
GS-3
Nobel Prize for Physics, 2017 – Indian Connection
(Topic: Awareness in the fields of Science and Space)
2017 Nobel Prize for Physics has been conferred to three scientists namely Rainer Weiss, Barry C Barish & Kip S Thorne under the LIGO Project for their discovery of gravitational waves, 100 years after Einstein’s General Relativity predicted it.
- Celebrates the direct detection of Gravitational waves arriving from the merger two large Black holes in a distant galaxy a Billion of light years away
- Gravitational waves carry information about their dramatic origins and about the nature of gravity that cannot otherwise be obtained – this opens a new window to Astronomy since Gravitational Waves are an entirely new way of observing the most violent events in space.
LIGO-India mega-science project
LIGO-India brings forth a real possibility of Indian scientists and technologists stepping forward, with strong international cooperation, into the frontier of an emergent area of high visibility and promise presented by the recent GW detections and the high promise of a new window of gravitational-wave astronomy to probe the universe. Inclusion of LIGO-India greatly improves the angular resolution in the location of the gravitational-wave source by the LIGO global network.
The LIGO-India proposal: For the construction and operation of an Advanced LIGO Detector in India in collaboration with the LIGO Laboratories, USA.
Objective: To set up the Indian node of the three node global Advanced LIGO detector network by 2024 and operate it for 10 years.
Task for LIGO-India: Challenge of constructing the very large vaccum infrastructure that would hold a space of volume 10 million litres that can accommodate the entire 4 km scale laser interferometer in ultra-high vacuum environment at nano-torrs. Indian team is also responsible for installation and commissioning the complex instrument and attaining the ultimate design sensitivity.
Must Solve: Question 1 + Question 2
Please Note:
Theme for the India Water Week – 2017 is “Water and Energy for Inclusive Growth”
India has avoided about 1 million (10 lakh) deaths of children under age five since 2005, owing to the significant reductions in mortality from pneumonia, diarrhoea, neonatal infections and birth asphyxia/trauma, measles and tetanus, according to study published in the latest issue of The Lancet.
India is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and jute, and ranks as the second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnut, vegetables, fruit and cotton.
Increased production and efficient distribution of food grains can move our country forward to achieve the goal of zero hunger and adequate nutrition for all – There is a need to provide an end-to-end (E2E) ecosystem comprising of “4-I s” namely ‘Irrigation’, ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Investment credit’ and ‘Insurance’. The second is Lab-to-Land (L2L) transfer of technology
Cabinet approves –
Signing and ratification of the Extradition Treaty between India and Lithuania – would provide a legal framework for seeking extradition of terrorists, economic offenders and other criminals from and to Lithuania. It will bring the criminals to justice, with a view to ensure peace and tranquility to public at large.
MoU between India and Switzerland on Technical Cooperation in Rail Sector – The MoU will enable technical cooperation in the following areas:-
- Traction Rolling stock
- EMU and train sets
- Traction Propulsion Equipments
- Freight and Passenger Cars
- Tilting Trains
- Railway Electrification Equipments
- Train scheduling and operation improvement
- Railway Station modernization
- Multimodal transport
- Tunneling technology
Turtle Sanctuary to be set up in Allahabad – To protect the rich aquatic biodiversity of river Ganga from escalating anthropogenic pressures along with –
- Development of River Biodiversity Park at Sangam (confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Sarasvati)
- Establishment of a Turtle Rearing Centre (Permanent nursery at Triveni Pushp and makeshift annual hatcheries)
- Awareness sessions on the importance of river Ganga and imperativeness of its conservation has been approved
Gujarat –
- Around 48% of the cargo entering or exiting the ports of the country is from the ports of Gujarat
- The State is the largest contributor in the marine fisheries business in India and its share is around 20% of the total trade.
States that have reached the milestone of making all cities and towns ‘Open Defecation Free’:
- Madhya Pradesh
- Maharashtra
- Chattisgarh
- Jharkhand
- Haryana
Djibouti and Ethiopia – In Africa (Locate on the map)
Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Scheme – Linked Krishna and Godavari rivers; saved Krishna delta from a drought-like situation arising from water scarcity in river Krishna
Project Monitoring Information System (PMIS) Moblie App will facilitate close, in-house monitoring of NHAI projects on a mobile phone – covering all key progress matrics such as design progress, contracting progress, construction progress, land acquisition, compensation disbursement, toll and traffic information and concession / contract information. PMIS is also enabled with Geographical Information System (GIS), which provides a geographical visualization of all NHAI projects on an India map. This is a unique feature of PMIS, which enables geo-visualization of projects rather than searching through a database.
Embryo Transfer Technology (ETT) – Has revolutionized the breeding strategies in Bovines as a tool to optimize the genetic improvement in cattle.
- Department of Animal husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries in co-operation with 12 States has undertaken a Mass Embryo Transfer programme in Indigenous Breeds under the scheme, National Mission on Bovine Productivity.
- The programme is implemented with the objective of conservation and development of indigenous breeds under Rashtriya Gokul Mission.
- Through the use of ETT-
- Farmer can get a 5-6 fold increase in number of offsprings
- The calves so born will be of high genetic merit
- The offsprings born will be free from diseases.
India – EU Joint Statement during 14th India-EU Summit, New Delhi
- India EU Joint Statement Clean Energy and Climate Change 6 Oct 2017
- India EU Joint Statement on Counter Terrorism 6 Oct 2017
- India EU Joint Statement on Urban Partnership 6 Oct 2017
India and Africa: Link 1 + Link 2 + Link 3 + Link 4 + Link 5
