Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 12th August 2021

What is in news : Indore, India's cleanest city, has now been declared as the country's first 'water plus' city under the Swachh Survekshan 2021

Water PLUS Protocol

• Reiterating its commitment to the cause, the Ministry of Urban Development also launched the Water PLUS Protocol.
• Moving beyond ODF, ODF+ and ODF++, the Water PLUS protocol aims to provide a guideline for cities and towns to ensure that no untreated wastewater is released into the environment thereby enabling sustainability of the sanitation value chain.
• This year, the citizen-centric focus has been enhanced substantially through verification of the progress made by cities on Swachhata through direct responses from citizens.

What is in news : The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has released a report -- The "Impact of Exemption under Article 15 (5) with regards to Article 21A of the Constitution of India on Education of Children in Minority Communities"

Highlights of the Report:

• Minority Schools Catering to the Non-Minorities: Overall, 62.5% of the students in these schools belonged to non-minority communities. Only 8.76% of the students in minority schools belong to socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Disproportionate Numbers: In West Bengal, 92.47% of the minority population is of Muslims and 2.47% are Christians. On the contrary, there are 114 Christian minority schools and only two schools with Muslim minority status. Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh, though the Christian population is less than 1% there are 197 Christian minority schools in the state.
• This disproportion takes away the core objective of establishing minority educational institutions.
• Non-Uniformity in Madarsas:
• Largest number of out-of-school children – at 1.1 crore – belonged to the Muslim community.
• According to the report, there are three kinds of madrasas in the country:
  • Recognised Madrasas: These are registered and impart both religious as well as secular education;
  • Unrecognised Madrasas: These have been found deficient for registration by state governments as secular education is not imparted.
  • Unmapped Madrasas:
    • Have never applied for registration.
    • The Sachar Committee report 2005, which says 4% of Muslim children (15.3 lakh) attend madrasas, has only taken into account the registered madrasas.

ECONOMY

What is in news : The 5th edition of the National Public Procurement Conclave (NPPC) was recently organized

By: Government e-Marketplace (GeM) (in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry [CII])

Theme : “Technology enabled Government Procurement – Towards Efficiency, Transparency, and Inclusiveness”

Highlights of the conclave :

• Overview session on GeM
• Discussions ranging from promotion of MSMEs in public procurement to how fintech can enable access to credit for sellers and service providers doing business with the Government
• B2B and B2G meetings between Govt. buyers and sellers
• Digital Exhibition of various products and services by sellers

Government e-Marketplace (GeM)

• GeM is a one-stop National Public Procurement Portal to facilitate online procurement of common use Goods & Services required by various Central and State Government Departments / Organizations /Public Sector Undertakings ( PSUs).
• It was launched in 2016 to bring transparency and efficiency in the government buying process.
• It operates under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• The procurement of goods and services by Ministries and the Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) is mandatory for goods and services available on GeM.
• It also provides the tools of e-bidding and reverse e-auction to facilitate the government users achieve the best value for their money.

What is in news : India's total foodgrain production has hit a record high of 308.65 million tonnes (MT) for 2020-21 as the rabi foodgrain output exceeded the target, according to the fourth advance estimate of production released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare

Major crops can be classified into-

• Food crops- Rice, Wheat, Millets, Maize and Pulses.
• Cash crops- Sugarcane, Oilseeds, Horticulture crops, Tea, Coffee, Rubber, Cotton and Jute.

NATIONAL MISSION ON EDIBLE OIL-OIL PALM

What is in news : Recently, the Prime Minister has announced a new national initiative on palm oil production to help increase farm incomes. The scheme, called National Edible Oil Mission-Oil Palm (NMEO-OP), for self-reliance in edible oil involves investment of over Rs. 11,000 crore (over a five year period).

Aims:

• To harness domestic edible oil prices that are dictated by expensive palm oil imports.
• To raise the domestic production of palm oil by three times to 11 lakh MT by 2025-26.
• This will involve raising the area under oil palm cultivation to 10 lakh hectares by 2025-26 and 16.7 lakh hectares by 2029-30.

Features:

• The special emphasis of the scheme will be in India’s north-eastern states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands due to the conducive weather conditions in the regions.
• Under the scheme, oil palm farmers will be provided financial assistance and will get remuneration under a price and viability formula.

Background :

• Devastating impact of Covid-19 pandemic
• World economy has shrunk by 4.4% and global trade by 5.3%

Unavoidable declines in trade and output

• Issues With Global Trade Supply Chain
• Repercussions for corporations and businesses that have benefited from economic interdependence supported by cross-border supply chains.
• Trade rules have worked best when the global economy is booming and isn’t facing a crisis.
• The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development held that emerging and developing economies, which rely on export-led growth, will now be severely impacted as the global economy contracts and the world opts protectionism policies.
• The least developed countries whose economies are driven by the sale of raw materials will also face hard consequences.

Way Forward

• Global supply chains that have remained dormant for long can be made resilient by stimulus packages and forced savings. Such interventions are expected to help revive manufacturing with lower production costs, induce investments and promote technology transfers.
• In a post Covid-19 world, members of the World Trade Organization should promote trade facilitating rules.
• Mutually beneficial trade arrangements that seek deeper economic integration should be entered into at the bilateral and regional levels to create win-win situations for all stakeholders, including consumers, who tend to benefit from lowered barriers and harmonised standards.
• Countries that harness technology are expected to dominate international trade in future with a transformational impact on the global economy.
• Just as the steam engine in the 19th century and computing power in the 20th century, data will be the main driver of economic growth in the 21st century.
• Rapid growth in e-commerce and the virtual world will demand entirely new skills from the workforce. Therefore, economic policies should focus on stronger safety nets for workers; income protection, skill training, health care and educational support for families.
• Building an ecosystem that incentivises value-added manufacturing and technology-induced finished products should form a part of long-term strategy for emerging economies like India.
• Addressing the needs of the most vulnerable countries – measures, for example in relation to export restrictions and creation of regional stockpiles, could include specific exemptions or assistance to address the needs of the poorest countries.
• Keeping markets open and predictable, as well as fostering a more generally favourable business environment, will be critical to spur the renewed investment. And if countries work together, much faster recovery is possible than if each country acts alone.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

What is in news : ISRO EOS 3 satellite that was launched failed in third stage

About :

• The satellite, EOS-03, was carried on board the 14th flight of the GSLV, the GSLV-F10, which was to place the satellite in a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit.
• The EOS-03 was a state-of-the-art agile satellite that would enable real-time monitoring of natural disasters such as floods and cyclones, monitoring of water bodies, crops, vegetation condition, forest cover changes among others.
• This was the second launch for ISRO in 2021 as work has been hit by the COVID-19 restrictions.

Earth Observation Satellites

• An Earth Observation Satellite or Earth Remote Sensing Satellite is a satellite used or designed for Earth Observance (EO) from orbit, including spy satellites and similar ones intended for non-military uses such as environmental monitoring, meteorology, cartography and others.
• The most common type are Earth imaging satellites, that take satellite images, analogous to aerial photographs; some EOS satellites may perform remote sensing without forming pictures, such as in GNSS radio occultation.
• The first occurrence of satellite remote sensing can be dated to the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union in 1957

REPORTS & INDICES

By : Commonwealth Secretariat

Details :

• Measures the status of young people among 181 countries across the world
• Singapore was ranked at the top for the first time.
• It is followed by Slovenia, Norway, Malta and Denmark.
• Bottom countries in the index include- Chad, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Niger.
• India was ranked at 122nd position
• Condition of young people has improved worldwide by 3.1 percent in between 2010 and 2018. However, the progress remained slow
• Positive trajectory of youth development pre-pandemic time, which covid-19 virus could reverse if urgent action is not taken to secure the gain.
• Top five improvers include- India, Afghanistan, Russia, Ethiopia, and Burkina Faso. They advanced their score on an average by 15.74 per cent.
• Countries like Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Jordan and Lebanon witnessed greatest decline in youth development in between 2010 and 2018
• Ranks countries between the score of 0.00 (lowest) and 1.00 (highest) on the basis of developments in youth with respect to education, health, employment, equality & inclusion, political & civic participation, peace and security

SNIPPETS

• India and Saudi Indian is all set to conduct their first ever naval exercise called “AL-MOHED AL-HINDI 2021”.

• ODF Definition for Urban India : A city/ward is notified as ODF city/ward if, at any point of the day, not a single person is found defecating in the open.
• ODF++ : The ODF++ protocol adds the condition that “faecal sludge/septage and sewage is safely managed and treated, with no discharging and/or dumping of untreated faecal sludge/septage and sewage in drains, water bodies or open areas.”