Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 7th August 2021

What is in news : The menace of tourists feeding wild animals has resurfaced at Bandipur tiger reserve

Details :

• Photograph of the journalist feeding a spotted deer went viral on social media
• Tiger reserve is bisected by two national highways

Concern :

• Practices of feeding wild animals are a danger for animals because they tend to lose their fear of human beings
• Such animals become more susceptible to be trapped and poached
• Animals can also venture into human landscape and could trailed by carnivores. It could also escalate human-animal conflict
• If animals become habituated to being fed by humans, their habit of forage for fodder in the wild and survive through tough times could be lost in long term

BANDIPUR TIGER RESERVE

• Established in 1973 under Project Tiger. In 1985, by including adjacent areas from Venugopala Wildlife Park, it was enlarged and named as Bandipur National Park.
• Situated in two contiguous districts (Mysore and Chamarajanagar) of Karnataka and is located at the tri-junction area of the States Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It forms a part of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve.
• The park is located between the Kabini river in the north and the Moyar river in the south. The Nugu river runs through the park. The highest point in the park is on a hill called Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta.
• The Bandipur along with Nagarahole, Mudumalai, Sathyamangalam & Wayanad constitutes the single largest Wild population of Tigers in the world.
• This Landscape is also home to the single largest Asian Elephant population in the world and is part of the Mysore Elephant Reserve (MER).

SOCIAL ISSUES

A comprehensive initiative called PM Evidya has been initiatedas part of AtmaNirbhar Bharat Abhiyaan on 17th May, 2020, which unifies all efforts related to digital/online/on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education.

The initiative includes:

• DIKSHA (one nation, one digital platform)is the nation’s digital infrastructure for providing quality e-content for school education in states/UTs and QR coded Energized Textbooks for all gradesare available on it.
• One earmarked SwayamPrabha TV channel per class from 1 to 12 (one class, one channel).
• Extensive use of Radio, Community radio and CBSE Podcast- ShikshaVani.
• Special e-content for visually and hearing impaired developed on Digitally Accessible Information System (DAISY) and in sign language on NIOS website/ YouTube.
• To reach out to those students who lack access to technology various innovative activities are being done at national, state or district level such as Gali-GaliSim-Sim, Tili-Mili programme, Motor Eskool, Roving Teacher, Project SMILE (Social Media Interface for Learning Engagement), e-Kaksha, formation of Whatsap and other social media groups, Work Book Distribution at home, Teacher calling to maintain connects with students.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

What is in news: Principal Scientific Adviser, Prof. K. Vijay Raghavan, virtually inaugurated a decentralized biomedical waste incinerator at Buxar in Bihar.

Details :

• Developed by Ganesh Engineering Works
• Selected through Biomedical Waste Treatment Innovation Challenge that was launched in June 2020
• Developed under the Innovation challenge organised under Waste to Wealth Mission.

About :

• Portable, forced draft incinerator
• Capability to handle 50 kg of biomedical waste made of cotton, plastic, or similar materials per hour
• Has provision of waste heat recovery
• Waste to Wealth Mission: This mission is one among nine scientific missions of Science, Technology, and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC) of Prime Minister. It is spearheaded by the Office of Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India.

INCENERATION :

• Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials.
• Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat.
• The ash is mostly formed by the inorganic constituents of the waste, and may take the form of solid lumps or particulates carried by the flue gas.
• In some cases, the heat generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power.
• Incineration with energy recovery is one of several waste-to-energy (WTE) technologies such as gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion.

HISTORY-ART-CULTURE

What is in news : Year-long celebrations marking 150 years of Abanindranath Tagore was started recently

About :

• Born in 1871
• Nephew of Rabindranath Tagore
• One of the most prominent artists of Bengal school of art in India
• First major supporter of swadeshi values in Indian art
• He first created the ‘Indian Society of Oriental Art’ and later went on to establish Bengal school of art.
• He believed that Indian art and its art forms gave importance to spirituality as opposed to the West which stressed on materialism, thus rejecting it.
• His idea of modernizing Mughal and Rajput paintings eventually gave rise to modern Indian painting, which took birth at his Bengal school of art.
• Most of his works revolved around Hindu philosophy.
• In his later works, Abanindranath started integrating Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his style. The intention behind this move was to construct an amalgamation of the modern pan-Asian artistic tradition and the common elements of Eastern artistic and spiritual culture.
• Famous paintings are: Bharat Mata, The Passing of Shah Jahan (1900), My Mother (1912–13), Fairyland illustration (1913), Journey’s End (circa 1913).
• Literature:
  • Abanindranath is also regarded as a proficient and accomplished writer.
  • Most of his literary works were meant for children. Some of his books like ‘BudoAngla’, ‘KhirerPutul’ and ‘Rajkahini’ are best examples of Bengali children’s literature.

Bengal School of Painting:

• It is also called the Renaissance School or the Revivalist School, as it represented the first modern movement of Indian art.
• It rediscovered the glories of Indian art and consciously tried to produce what it considered a truly Indian art inspired by the creations of the past.
• Its leading artist was Abanindranath Tagore and its theoretician was E.B. Havell, the principal of the Calcutta School of Art.
• They broke away from the convention of oil painting and the realistic style, and turned for inspiration to medieval Indian traditions of miniature painting and the ancient art of mural painting in the Ajanta caves.
• They were also influenced by the art (wash technique) of Japanese artists who visited India at that time to develop an Asian Art movement.

SPORTS

What is in news : The Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna stands renamed as the “Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna”.

About Khel Ratna awards :

• Highest sporting award
• By - Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports
• For - Spectacular and most outstanding performance in the field of sports by a sportsperson over a period of four years
• Comprises a medallion, a certificate, and a cash prize of Rs 7.5 lakh

About Major Dhyan Chand :

• Born - August 29, 1905 (Allahabad)
• Served Indian Army
• His love for sports fetched him high ranks in Military
• He was the chief protagonist as India won three consecutive Olympic hockey gold medals — Amsterdam 1928, Los Angeles 1932, and Berlin 1936.
• Played 12 Olympic matches, scoring 33 goals
• August 29, is celebrated as National Sports Day with the President giving away the Arjuna Awards and the other honours — including the one now named after Dhyan Chand himself.
• An award for lifetime achievement in sport is already named after him. The Capital’s National Stadium was renamed Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.
• He is known as WIZARD OF HOCKEY

SNIPPETS

• Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman introduced the Taxation Laws (Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha on Thursday to nullify the relevant retrospective tax clauses that were introduced in 2012 to bring past indirect transfer of Indian assets under the ambit of taxation. As per the proposed changes, any tax demand made on transactions that took place before May 2012 shall be dropped, and any taxes already collected shall be repaid, albeit without interest.
• OLYMPICS HOCKEY - In the Tokyo Games, India edged Germany 5-4 to secure bronze through the third-place play-off.
• OLYMPICS WRESTLING - Ravi Kumar Dahiya finished Wrestling match with the silver medal after losing 7-4 to World champion Zaur Uguev of Russia
• The 2nd Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Range Technology (ICORT-2021) is being held virtually on August 05, 2021. The conference has been organised by Integrated Test Range (ITR) Chandipur, a laboratory of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
• VOC Port Trust has become the first major port in the country to deploy e-cars. It has inducted three Tata Xpres-T electric vehicles in the first phase.
• Assam and Meghalaya governments have decided to form three regional committees each to first get the views of the people living in the disputed areas and prepare a recommendation within 30 days for a decision at the level of the Chief Ministers.
• Central government approved a Constitution Amendment Bill on August 4, 2021 that seeks to empower states and UTs to make their own OBC list
• Food delivery platform Swiggy is launching electric-cycles (E-cycles) in association with the Hero Lectro Cargo (HLC) in Hyderabad.These e-cycles are affordable and enable the company to reduce their carbon footprint. It would also reduce the cost of delivery per km for delivery partners.
• Government of India, Central Water Commission, government representatives of 10 participating states and World Bank signed a $250 million project  for long-term dam safety program.The dam safety project will be implemented in across 120 dams in the states of Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Rajasthan, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu.
• Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) launched an earthquake early warning (EEW) Mobile App for Uttarakhand.